


The Adventure of the Blackened Band

by RosiePaw



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-05
Updated: 2014-10-23
Packaged: 2018-02-20 00:34:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 30,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2408642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RosiePaw/pseuds/RosiePaw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John remembered how Sherlock’s head tucked down to hold his instrument, how the sleeve of his bow arm drew up just a bit, just enough to reveal the band of black pigmentation encircling his wrist...<br/>-----------------------------------------------------------------------------</p>
<p>In which John and Sherlock may or may not be soulmates, and this may or may not matter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The seventeen steps were steeper than John remembered. He’d been using his cane on and off.  More on than off, to be honest.  He should have brought it with him tonight, but he hadn’t wanted to listen to the inevitable commentary it would provoke from Sherlock.

Sherlock waited at the top of the stair, watching, assessing, _deducing_ , but uncharacteristically silent as John limped by with his kit bag.

“Thanks,” said John. “It’s just for a few nights.”

Sherlock shrugged. “Mrs Hudson might not let you leave again so easily.”

They stared at each other, Sherlock of course _not_ offering him a seat or a cup of tea or any of the small courtesies that might have made the moment easier.

“Yoo-hoo! Boys?  Oh, John, you’ve come!  Let me just get...”  Mrs Hudson was still talking as she vanished into her kitchen.

“Baked goods,” sniffed Sherlock, and he withdrew into the flat to stand by the window.

Mrs Hudson reappeared with a plate of biscuits and negotiated the steps with hardly any more than trouble than John, who perforce moved further into the flat in order to stop blocking the doorway. Having felt that he’d finally arrived, he set his bag down. She bustled past him and set the plate on the coffee table, announcing, “I’ll just make us all some tea, shall I?”

Gratefully, John moved to assist her with bringing in mugs, spoons, milk, sugar and finally the tea pot itself. When Mrs Hudson sat down to pour, John sat as well.  He’d lived in this flat once.  He’d visited, later on.  Mary had encouraged his friendship with Sherlock.  John had come by from time to time and had never before hesitated to help himself to a seat.  Never before tonight.

Mrs Hudson knew the things that needed to be said and said them. Such a shock.  So sad.  So soon after.  And then, after a delicate pause, did John think things might have been different?

John, who’d been more or less expecting the question, drew in a breath.  Let it out.  “If Gloria had lived, you mean?”

Sherlock’s voice lanced across the room. “Of course they’d be different.  One of us would have to sleep on the sofa.”

The acerbic pragmatism pierced the barriers John had gathered around himself to allow him to acknowledge his circumstances while keeping them at a distance. Now they gathered close around him, choking him, leaving him unable to speak.

“Sherlock, dear, even you can’t know...”

“That Mary Morstan’s past would eventually catch up with her? Do you honestly think her former associates – let alone the associates of her former victims – would be deterred by the presence of a small child?  The one saving grace of this situation is that there’s _not_ a child in the middle of it.”

“Sherlock Holmes!” Mrs Hudson rose to her feet.

So did John. “I’m going to turn in now.”  If his host had been anyone else, he would have prefaced the statement with, “If you don’t mind.”  If his host had been anyone else, they would have shown him to his room, told him they’d changed the sheets or at least given him fresh ones.

Sod the sheets, he needed to be alone. He limped up the stairs to his old room, kit bag in hand, the sound of Mrs Hudson giving Sherlock a piece of her mind clearly audible behind him.  There was no rumbled baritone response, so Sherlock was apparently ignoring her.

The room was cool and dark and smelled as he remembered it, aged and slightly musty. Nothing like the clean, bright, _modern_ smell of the flat he’d shared with Mary.  Being alone here was different than being alone there.  The silence here didn’t mock or accuse him.

Stripped to his vest and pants, John lay down on top of the coverlet, not expecting to sleep. In the strictest sense, his expectations were met.  But in the darkness, his thoughts drifted here and there.  He only realized he’d lost track of them entirely until sometime later, when the sound of the violin from the flat below recalled him to himself.  Sherlock was, thank god, indulging in recognizable melody tonight.

John found himself chilled, so he turned back the blankets, slid down in between the uncertain sheets. He lay there listening, remembering other times when he’d watched Sherlock play.  Remembering how Sherlock swayed ever so slightly with the music.  Remembering how Sherlock’s head tucked down to hold his instrument, how the sleeve of his bow arm drew up just a bit, just enough to reveal the band of black pigmentation encircling his wrist.

***

When it became apparent that Mary’s latest absence was stretching beyond the usual, John hadn’t known whom to call. Sherlock, he thought, and then imagined himself sitting on the sofa like a client, yet one more client with a failing marriage and a vanished spouse.  In the end, he called Greg Lestrade, who listened with kind professionalism and promised to call him back as soon as anything was known.  It was only after John had hung up that it occurred to him that Sherlock would at least have conscripted him to help.

The hours trudged by. He went into work because sitting at home doing nothing would have been unbearable.  Greg called from time to time to ask this or that irrelevant question, all of them really amounting to nothing more than, “Hang on, we’re working on it.”

Four days later, John was washing his hands after seeing a patient and something changed within his field of vision. It took him a moment to realize what.  The band of gold-pigmented skin around his wrist darkened slowly, the last faded colour bleeding out of it.  A nurse ducking into the room in search of bandages glanced at his face, looked again, noticed his wrist and had him sit down.  Breathe, doctor, in, out, in, out, steady now, steady, is there someone you can call to take you home?

His phone had rung at just that moment. It wasn’t Greg but rather Mycroft, his voice all posh reserve.

“John, I expect you already know why I’m calling, but I’m sorry to confirm the news. The authorities require someone to provide identification and I’m told that this may provide a sense of, ah, closure?  If you wish, I can send a car.”

John opened his mouth. Closed it again.  He couldn’t think of what to say and why should he say anything?  Mycroft was a Holmes and therefore perfectly capable of conducting the entire conversation by himself.

“Or I can handle the matter myself, as you prefer. Shall I send a car to take you home?”

In due time, a car arrived. The anonymously handsome young man in the back seat asked, “Home?”  John nodded because it was easier than specifying any other destination and was delivered to his own doorstep.  The car waited until he’d actually gone inside before pulling away.

John sat alone in the bright flat, which was still almost clean at that point despite the days of Mary’s absence. He didn’t think about Mycroft providing identification for a woman Mycroft had met exactly twice, once at his parent’s house for Christmas and once, briefly, on an airstrip.  John didn’t think about whether or not it had been Mycroft’s people who’d taken Mary down in the end.  It didn’t matter.  It was always going to happen.  John had just never thought about it, and he wasn’t going to start now.

Greg showed up the next evening, dragged John out to a pub and bought him enough pints that John could blame it on the beer when he broke down and cried. Greg had had a few himself by then.  He patted clumsily in the general direction of John’s shoulder.  “Whatever I can do to help, mate, you let me know.”

Months later, it occurred to John that Mycroft’s and Greg’s intentions had been more or less the same. Both had tried to provide whatever help they could.  It was hardly their fault that John didn’t know what to ask for.

***

Sherlock didn’t wait to be asked. Greg showed up again a week later, took one look at John and swore.  “Sherlock’s right – you look like hell.”

“I haven’t seen Sherlock for... Hell, it’s been at least a month.”

“Well, he’s seen you and he’s right. When’s the last time you slept?”

“He’s been stalking me, you mean. Aren’t police officers meant to put a stop to that sort of thing?”

“You come see me when you’re better rested and we’ll talk about laying charges. Here.  This is for you.”

Greg handed over a sealed envelope containing something small and heavy.

John sighed. “It’s not for want of trying.  It’s... too quiet to sleep here, if that makes any sense.”

“The wrong sort of quiet, is it?”

“I suppose. You know what’s in this, of course?”

“Sherlock didn’t say.”

“I thought you were supposed to be a detective?” asked John, his face completely straight.

Greg grinned in what might have been relief. “Oi!  Right, then.  I _deduce_ that your envelope contains access to the right sort of quiet.  And I don’t mean by chemical means, it’s got the wrong sort of feel for that.”

“Christ, you don’t think even Sherlock would walk into New Scotland Yard...”

“And ask an officer to deliver drugs for him? It was at a crime scene, actually.  He informed me that thanks to Yard’s incompetence, the supposed murder victim was by now happily starting a new life in Costa Rica and that Anderson would show signs of intelligence before the _real_ owner of the corpse at our feet was reported missing.  Then he handed me the envelope, told me it was for you and left.  Look, I think he might have the right idea.  Not just about the quiet.  This flat...  John, it’s getting to be a bit of tip.”

“Compared to _Baker Street_?”

“Well, there’s a difference between clutter and squalor.” And then, as John continued to stare, “Use the keys, John.  At least think about it.  Even if it’s just for a few nights.”

***

After the first couple of nights, John took it upon himself to change the sheets on his old bed at Baker Street. He went back to the flat he’d shared with Mary for a few more of his things.  Nothing more than he’d need for a week.  He _was_ sleeping better at Baker Street.  A few more days, a week, he’d be back on his feet.

In the meantime, John went to work each day. He stopped for groceries and take-away on the way back to Baker Street so that he’d have something to eat and if he bought a bit extra, it was only because it seemed polite.  He tidied up around the flat, partly so that Mrs Hudson wouldn’t have to and partly because Greg’s tip remark had stung.  He’d got out of the habit of taking care of things like that and needed practice, so he was practicing on Sherlock’s flat, that was all.

Sherlock himself came and went like some great tom cat, vanishing out the door in a swirl of coat and scarf. He’d come back eventually, triumphant or scowling as the case might be, not infrequently covered in mud, blood or, on one occasion, confetti.  He did experiments in the kitchen that resulted in horrendous stenches, threw the windows open and forgot about them, so that John, returning hours later, found the flat freezing and Sherlock either gone entirely or lying motionless on the sofa with his fingers and toes turning blue.

After that first evening, he never said two words to John, including the phrase, “Thank you.” He did, however, deign to accept cups of tea.  And occasionally the leftover take-away that John had meant to keep for lunch the next day mysteriously vanished from the refrigerator.

***

There was, eventually, a funeral, a small graveside affair arranged by Mycroft. John attended, because there was no one else really and because he’d loved her once.  Sherlock and Greg both showed up, although he’d asked neither of them and in fact hadn’t told them the date or time.  The location was obvious enough.  Mary was buried next to their daughter.  Whatever her real name had been, her gravestone read “Mary Morstan Watson, 1974-2016.”

Next to it stood the other stone. “Gloria Scott Watson, 2014.”  SIDS typically strikes infants two to four months of age.

John stopped to lay a hand on his daughter’s grave before he left. There was room for one more grave beside the child’s.  His, probably, some day.

“Was Scott a family name?” asked Greg.

“Mary’s idea,” John said as he stood up again. “She claimed that by the time Gloria was a teenager, Scott would be the new Taylor.”  And then in response to Greg’s puzzled look, “A boy’s name used as a girl’s name.”

“Like Meredith,” Sherlock put in, “or Joyce.”

“Go on, those used to be bloke’s names?”

“As much so as Scott is now,” replied Sherlock.

Greg was still shaking his head as they walked away from the pair of graves.  

***

John stared at his room. There were... boxes.  Not all that many, and on investigation they appeared to contain nothing more dangerous than the remainder of John’s things.  But they had definitely not been there when he’d left Baker Street for work that morning.

He squared his shoulders and marched back downstairs.

“Want to tell me about the boxes in my room?”

Silence from the recumbent detective on the sofa.

“Right, poor phrasing. _Tell me_ about the boxes in my room.”

Silence.

“Or I shoot the Belstaff.”

Sherlock sat up abruptly, stared at John for approximately 34 seconds and then relaxed. “No you wouldn’t.  But as regards your boxes, you’ve been here almost a month.  Very little of what remained in your previous flat was yours – you’d brought most of your own things over already.  Everything else is in 221C.  Mrs Hudson said that if you didn’t want to go through it yourself, she has a friend who volunteers with Oxfam who would take care of it for you.”

John shut his eyes. When he still opened them, he was still standing in 221B Baker Street.  “Sherlock, you can’t just move people’s things...”

“I didn’t. Not personally.”

“What, you got your homeless network to do it? Or, no, wait, you called _Mycroft_?”

Sherlock sniffed loudly.

John doggedly carried on. “You know what?  It doesn’t matter.  You can’t just have people’s things moved...”

“I obviously _did_.”

“...without their permission! I signed a lease on that flat.”

“It’s in a popular area of the city, the landlord will find new tenants almost immediately.”

“ _You told my landlord to let my flat out?_ ”

“Previous landlord. Former flat.  This one is more convenient to your clinic _and_ to the Yard when you want to meet Graham for a pint.  You’ve already been living here for almost a month...”

“And this is the first time in almost a month that you’ve spoken to me!”

Sherlock frowned slightly, obviously not seeing why this would be an issue. “You never said anything worth responding to.”

“I offered you tea!”

“And then brought it to me despite my lack of response. I thought you...”  Sherlock bit his lip.  “George said to give you space.”

“Greg.”

“Lestrade. And Mrs Hudson said the same thing.”

John’s temper deflated abruptly. “Not _that_ much space, you berk.  Look, I, ah...  I’ll let you know about the stuff in 221C.  Thanks for, well, not just pitching it out.  I’m – I’m going to make tea, would you like some?”

He waited.

“ _Sherlock!_ Do.  You. Want. Some. Tea?”

Sherlock refocused on John from whatever corner of his mind palace he’d begun to retreat to. “Yes.  Of course.  I always want tea when you make it.”

***

After that their relationship began to regain something like its old ease. Sherlock started texting John during working hours to ask him his medical opinion on this or that.  Then the texts began arriving with lurid photos attached.

_Point of sending photo of severed finger inserted in eye socket = ???_

_Finger and eye socket not from same individual. – SH_

_Right. Here I was thinking the victim had stuck his own finger in his eye and died of it, the poor sod._

_Owner of eye socket was female. Note bone structure.  Also, owner of finger suspect not victim. – SH_

 

Eventually Sherlock tired of sending photos and began demanding John’s presence at crime scenes.

_23 Frith Street. Take cab not Tube. – SH_

_Now. – SH_

_Why aren’t you here yet? – SH_

_In middle of pelvic exam when texts arrived._

_Giving or receiving? – SH_

_Inquiring in order to express interest in your health. – SH_

_Ta. Giving, not receiving._

_16 Lisle Street. Take cab and offer extra fare for speed. – SH_

_Also, bring gun. – SH_


	2. Chapter 2

It had hardly been two weeks after the Lisle Street incident – which had been resolved gunlessly by the time John arrived – that John came home from the clinic only to have Sherlock pounce on him the moment he walked in the door.

“Good, you’re here. We’re going out.”

“Wait, stop. _We’re_ going out? _Some_ of us have already put in a long day at work.”

“It’s for a case. Wear the clothes on your bed.”

John briefly weighed the option of going upstairs and returning in his pyjamas – or less – against the chances that Sherlock would drag him out the door anyway. The fact was, the quiet evening of crap telly he’d had in mind was seeming less appealing by the minute.  Whatever Sherlock had in mind might or might not be what John considered “fun.”  Hell, it might or might not be _legal_.  But it was highly unlikely to be boring.

John was relieved to discover that the clothes Sherlock had laid out on his bed were at least his own clothes, dark jeans and a cobalt blue shirt. Nice without being overly dressy.  The sort of thing he might wear on a first date, although presumably this was _not_ what Sherlock intended.  Presumably.

The long, appraising look Sherlock gave him when he descended from his bedroom almost had John questioning his presumptions, but then Sherlock more or less threw his jacket at him and bundled him out the door and into a cab.

Their destination proved to be a dance club, upscale without being pretentious, well-populated without being too crowded. This early in the evening, the music was low-key and only a few couples swayed together on the dance floor.  Most of the patrons were clustered around the bar or at the small tables that ringed the edges of the room.

John made a mental note as to the club’s name and address. He hadn’t found himself interested in dating since Mary’s departure, but if he ever got back into it, this would be a nice spot to bring someone.  This evening, however, he and Sherlock were here on business.  Sherlock had explained during the cab ride that he was trying to contact a certain tall, ginger gentleman known to spend time at this particular club.

Their quarry not being immediately visible, Sherlock waved John towards a table, swept off to the bar and returned with two scotch-and-sodas. “I don’t know how long we’ll be.  If you finish yours, you can start on mine.”

This was, by Sherlock’s standards, fairly considerate, and John’s first sip proved the scotch to be decent enough. “Tell me why we’re interested in tall and ginger,” he proposed, keeping his voice down.

Sherlock slid closer around the table and tilted his head towards John’s, as if in intimate conversation. John could feel the slight puff of breath against his cheek as Sherlock spoke.  “String of burglaries, all from photography supply shops.  The last one went slightly awry.  The shop’s owner walked in while the job was in progress.  There was a scuffle and the thief fled, but not before the owner got a good look at him.”

John frowned. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but that hardly sounds like a ‘one’.  I’m surprised you didn’t turn Lestrade down.”

“Lestrade’s not involved. The shop owner called me directly, believing – correctly – that I’d be more effective than the police in locating the thief.  And your assessment of the case is correct, but the shop owner is... an acquaintance of mine.”

“Like Angelo or Mrs Hudson?”

“No. Not like them.”  Sherlock grimaced and started to pull back.  Unthinking, John placed a hand on his sleeve to keep him close.

“Never mind, I shouldn’t have asked. Does it seem odd to you that someone with an unusual hair colour wouldn’t bother to dye it or shave it or something before embarking on a series of burglaries?

“Unless the ginger colour _is_ dye.  Most observers would focus on the ginger hair and pay less attention to other, more subtle identifying characteristics. _I_ wouldn’t.”

“No, of course you wouldn’t,” said John fondly, feeling the burn of the scotch in his stomach. He was far from being even tipsy.  He just felt... pleasant.  The music was pleasant, the club’s atmosphere was pleasant, even Sherlock’s disregard of personal space was pleasant.  It had been a while since he’d felt this sort of uncomplicated happiness.

Sherlock eyed him curiously, almost started to smile – and then focussed on something over John’s head, apparently across the room. “What’s _he_ doing here?  No, don’t look.”

“Tall and maybe-not-ginger?”

“No, someone else. Possibly a source of information.  Stay here.  Keep an eye out for our quarry.”  And Sherlock was gone, wandering off in what might or might not be the direction of the loo but was definitely not the direction in which he’d been looking.

The seat next to John had been empty for perhaps half a minute when another person slid into it – a notably female person. Younger than John but not too much so.  Short blond hair, feathering around her face.  Large eyes, a pretty shade of green that wasn’t due to coloured contacts.  Wristband still pale silver.

“Ah, hello,” she said, a bit hesitantly. Nice voice, a bit high.  “I hope you don’t think I’m pushy, but...”

“Not at all,” John replied, trying for his best, most inviting smile. It had been a while since he’d smiled at a woman this way, but he was fairly sure he hadn’t lost the trick of it.  He waved at his glass.  “May I get you something?”

“Ah, no, no thanks, I’ve just had, well...”

“Maybe in a bit then,” he suggested, implicitly inviting her to stay at least that bit longer.

She blushed prettily. “I just wanted to say that, well, I don’t mean to be nosy, but...  You and your partner...”

Oh, hell, this again. Still, it wasn’t the first time that John had dealt with the perception that he and Sherlock were a couple.

“Actually, he’s not my...”

But the woman had forged ahead. “I know some people say it’s not right and try to make all kinds of trouble about it, but I think they should mind their own business.”

“Look, that’s not... I mean, I agree with you, but he and I aren’t...”

“And I think it’s shameful that you should have to hide and make excuses. You don’t have to do that with me.”

“Thank you, that’s, ah, very kind but...”

“No, it’s not ‘kind,’ it’s just showing decent respect for other people’s right to be happy!”

John sighed and reached for his drink. This was definitely beginning to look like a lost cause.

“Just because you two have lost your soulmates, if you can give each other a bit of happiness, to even start to make up for what you’ve lost, well, why shouldn’t you be free to do that without other people making it their business?” demanded the woman.

He froze, barely remembering to swallow his mouthful of scotch-and-soda.

“I noticed your black wristbands, see, and I just wanted to say...”

“The man you’re here to meet tonight isn’t coming.” Sherlock, thank god, had come up behind the blonde’s shoulder.  “This isn’t the first time he’s stood you up, but it’s the last.  You’ll find him unavailable after this.  The lackluster quality of your sexual relationship isn’t enough to make up for the fact that it’s become obvious you’re not soulmates.  John, we’re leaving now.”

The woman was close to tears. “How did you...  How can you stand there and say...”  She broke off as the bartender approached and slid a tall glass of something cold and clear onto the table in front of her, then retreated.

“The man in the grey-checked shirt towards the end of the bar has been staring at you the entire evening. He’s not drunk or unintelligent, just very awkward with women he finds attractive.  Also, he’s unbonded.  You’ll have to start the conversation, but you’ve already demonstrated that’s not a problem for you.  John?”

***

Hours later, after the information Sherlock had gathered in the club had led them to tall-and-ginger – after tall-and-ginger had turned out not to be a thief but also to be extremely protective of his identical twin brother – after Sherlock and John had reached said brother before he could act on tall-and-ginger’s warning to flee – after their target had pulled a gun while tall-and-ginger came up behind them with a knife...

Hours later, after John had promised Lestrade that they’d be in to give their statements the next morning and Sherlock had vehemently denied that his slashed arm required the A&E, John found himself ensconced with Sherlock in a cab, returning to Baker Street. Once upon a time he would already have been thinking ahead to how he would write this adventure up in his blog, reviewing the evening’s events, making sure he had the details correct...

“What was in the glass?” he asked Sherlock, knowing the detective would need no further clarification.

“Water, a bit of lemon. She’d already had a few drinks before she approached you.”  Sherlock hesitated ever so slightly before adding, “You were discomfited by her statement.”

“There’s a first time for everything, I suppose. I’m used to us being taken for a couple.  Just not... a couple of widowers.”

“In the past, you’ve been able to deal with other’s misperceptions simply by displaying your wrist. Now this is no longer an option.”

“That’s part of it. Not the only part, I think.  If I’m going to date again...”

“You should. You become irritable when you don’t have sex frequently enough.”

“ _If_ I decide to date again for my _own_ reasons, it’s going to be different.  I hadn’t really thought about it before, but...  That woman tonight, she was looking for a potential soulmate, and I’m not.  Not anymore.”

Sherlock sniffed. “You never were.  Or rather, she never was, for you.”

“Because Mary was.”

“Only if you believe the unsubstantiated and highly unlikely theory that each person has only one so-called ‘soulmate’ rather than the more likely theory that the chromochemistry of the epidermis around your dominant wrist will respond to anyone who possesses the necessary traits and that it’s the mutuality of the high potential for change that triggers the actual reaction.”

“You’re saying that until Mary, I’d never met anyone else I was genetically compatible with? Sorry, Sherlock, _that_ sounds ‘highly unlikely.’” 

“ _Listen_ , John.  I said traits, not genetic traits.  In fact, the hypothesis that genetics are a trigger for chromochemical reactions was disproven some years ago.  Current theory proposes the recognition by the subconscious mind of the presence of key physical and personality traits as the trigger.  Your wristband turned gold for Mary because she was dangerous, reasonably clever and physically attractive and because you possessed her required set of key traits as well.”

“However her subconscious supposedly defined those, however _her_ subconscious communicated with _my_ subconscious and however our subconscious minds managed to affect the skin on our wrists,” John said dubiously.

“Says the man with the psychosomatic limp,” retorted Sherlock with a smirk. “Our minds _do_ – and should – control our transport, John.”

“I’m just saying that once you start invoking subconscious lists of traits, it sounds a hell of a lot like you’ve found a long-winded way of saying ‘soulmates.’”

“With at least one important difference: the term ‘soulmates’ is commonly taken to imply a unique match. The traits theory does not.  The woman you met this evening would never have caused your band to change colour simply because she was neither dangerous nor particularly intelligent.”

“No, she would never have caused my band to change colour _because it already has_.  That’s my point, really.  In the end, it doesn’t matter whether Mary was my soulmate or whether she was simply the first unbonded person I chanced to meet whose subconscious shopping list of traits matched with mine.  She’ll always be the only one I turned gold for, simply because the colour change doesn’t reverse.  And I’ll never cause anyone else to turn gold.  I’ve lost my – what did you call it? – my potential for change.”

And if that didn’t sound maudlin and self-pitying, John didn’t know what did. Christ, he should know better than to get into this sort of conversation this late at night.  A couple of drinks, a run through the streets, a little physical danger and the next thing you know, you’re sitting in a cab pouring your heart out to Sherlock Holmes.

Who was currently insisting, “Leaving aside your societally-endorsed obsession with colour change, however, it is still possible for you to meet potential partners who are dangerous, clever and physically attractive.”

“Well if _that’s_ all,” John shot back, “maybe I should date...”  Oh, hell, what was he saying?  He cut himself off, but Sherlock was still watching him, dark brows drawn slightly together.  “Maybe I should date again.  Absolutely.  You’re right, ah, absolutely right.”

Sherlock continued to watch him a moment longer, then turned away to look out the window until their cab pulled up in front of 221B. Sherlock swirled out of the cab and into the building, leaving John behind to pay.

They’d sat in Angelo’s, once, with Sherlock looking out the window. John, trying to get to know his new flatmate, had asked awkward questions about girlfriends and boyfriends.  He’d persisted until Sherlock had pulled his right sleeve up slightly to display the black band around his wrist and pronounced himself married to his work.

John’s face heated with the memory. It had seemed plausible and even admirable to him then that someone who’d found, loved and lost their soulmate would devote themselves to their work.  That Sherlock was relatively young and undeniably attractive made John’s blunder even more embarrassing.  He _hadn’t_ meant it to sound as if he were hitting on the man.

Now that John was a widower, the idea of anyone devoting the remainder of their lives solely to their work seemed a good deal less plausible. He didn’t see himself doing that, not for long anyway.  And Sherlock was still, well, _Sherlock_ , as brilliant and infuriating as ever, but where once John’s silver band and Sherlock’s black one had created a convenient, reliable boundary between them, now there was... open ground.  Unmarked, virgin, waiting for its first footprint – if any ever came.


	3. Chapter 3

“Dr Watson, call for you on line 3.”

“Thanks, Suzanne. Hello?”

_“Johnny! I lost your mobile number but remembered the name of the clinic.  Can you do lunch?”_

John sighed. At least Harry sounded reasonably sober this time.  “Hello to you too, Harry.  What’s up?”

_“Can’t a big sister just want to have lunch with her little brother?”_

“She could, but when’s the last time we actually did?”

Silence. Then: _“The new law’s gone through. It was announced this morning.”_

“Ah. Uh, congratulations?”

_“Maybe. I thought I’d feel... differently than I do.  John, I need to talk to someone.  Not Clara, of course.  Lunch?”_

John thought of the perfectly nice cheese sandwich waiting for him in his desk drawer with regret. “Lunch it is.  Half past noon?”

***

Harry looked good, although tired. She’d had her hair touched up recently, a sort of pinkish colour that John thought was meant to be strawberry blonde.  It might have seemed less incongruous if she’d been smiling.

They got coffees, ordered their sandwiches. After the waitress had left, John took a long pull of his coffee before asking, “So, the new laws?”

“Yeah, Clara and I can finally get properly divorced. None of this ‘separated but still married’ shit.  Of course the ‘pro-bonders’ are up in arms  Waving signs, yelling slogans, jumping on front of TV cameras.  Not that they matter anymore.”

“But.” 

“But nothing, really. I had an appointment with a tattoo artist this morning.”

That was new. “Really?” asked John as their sandwiches arrived.

“Yeah, really. Because a divorce decree isn’t going to do anything about...” Harry raised her gold-banded wrist briefly.  “Turns out he can’t tattoo over it, though.  Says the ink won’t take.”

“I’d also advise against trying to bleach it, burn it or cut it out. Or scrape or sand it off.  Stop looking at me like that.  Doctors see a lot of things.”

“I’ll take your word on that. Anyway, Tim – the artist – he’s working up a band-based collection of designs.  Some to hide it or at least de-emphasize it, others to kind of take it and make, ah, a new statement.”

“Let women know you’re available, you mean.”

For the first time in the conversation, Harry cracked a ghost of a smile. “Oh, there’s plenty of ways to do that, trust me.  Are you having trouble, little brother?  Maybe I should give you Tim’s number.  But I thought your mad flatmate had taken you back?”

“ _Flatmate_ , Harriet.  He’s not...  We were never more than flatmates.  Well, and friends.  And we’re still flatmates and friends.  He’s married to his work, I’m seriously thinking about phoning your tattoo artist.”

“He’d know if anyone would,” said Harry darkly.

“Tim?”

“No, Sherlock. He’s a chemist, right?”

“Among other things.”

“And the whole band thing, it’s based on chemistry. I bet he _does_ know how to make a band change colour.  It wouldn’t hurt to ask at least.”

“Harry...”

“Would you ask him for me, Johnny? Please?”

“Harry, I didn’t come here to listen to you talk about Sherlock. For once, I’m here to listen to you talk about _you_.  So, you’re getting a divorce, you’re getting a tattoo, you’ve been dating other women all along and plan to keep doing so.  Anything else?”

Harry stared. And then, to both their horror, the line of her mouth started to wobble.

“Oh, fuck!” She grabbed a wad of napkins just as John shoved another wad in her direction.  He looked away awkwardly as she caught her breath.

Finally: “Okay, it’s safe now. I think.”

“Harry, I’m sorry...”

“No. Don’t.  It’s just...  Oh, Johnny, how did this happen?  We were _soulmates_.  We were supposed to be everything the other one wanted.”

“I apparently wanted an assassin,” said John ruefully. “I’m probably the wrong person to ask.”

“Well, I also asked Tim.”

John nodded. “Tattoo artists must deal with that sort of thing a lot.  Like bartenders.”

“I asked her too.”

John couldn’t help it. He started to laugh, which set Harry off, and then she started crying again, just a bit, even though she was still laughing.  John handed her more napkins.  She blew her nose, loudly.  Her eyes were even pinker than her hair.

“Delores said – Delores is...”

“The bartender, got it.”

“Delores said that your soulmate is everything you want _at the time you meet them._ ”

John nodded, thinking about it. “But that can change.”

“Yeah. The thing is – we were so young, Clara and I.  When I met Clara, the one thing I wanted was someone who’d accept me as I was and not be on my case about drinking all the time.”

“Like Mom and Dad.”

“Right. And I think Clara wanted someone who needed her to take care of them.  You’re nodding.  You already figured this out, right?  Co-dependent, capital C.”

“Yes. I never said anything.  No point.”

Harry sighed. “’Cause I wouldn’t have listened.  You were right.  We were everything each other wanted and we were awful for each other.  We were awful _to_ each other.  I loved her, Johnny.  I never meant to hurt her, and by the end I was doing nothing but.”

“And she,” said John gently, “was hurting you.”

Harry’s mouth started to tremble again, but she got control of it, sniffed, waved her wad of napkins in the general direction of her face. “Thanks.  Thanks for...”  She waved the wad over her plate and in the general direction of John’s.  He’d finished his sandwich.  She’d torn hers to pieces.  It reminded John of Sherlock.

John’s mobile trilled. “Hello?  Yes, Suzanne, I’m...  Oh, hell, I had no idea it was that late.  I’ll be right there.”  He tucked the mobile away.  “Harry, I have to get back to work.  Look, stay in touch.  Here’s my mobile number.  Keep me posted on... things.  Your tattoo.  And... everything.”

“I will. Thanks, Johnny.”

***

Lots on the news that evening about the changes in the divorce laws. A selection of interviews: a politician, a lawyer, a marriage counsellor, a theologian.  Two divorcing couples, one a pair of resolute men, the other a grim-faced woman and a tearful man.  The interviews were enlivened with footage of protesting pro-bonders, who were at least colourful and loud.  “Those whom fate hath bonded, let no one put asunder!” declared one man’s sign.  Another behind him read, “Dobrieuzi is burning in hell!”  The name rang a dim and distant bell in John’s mind, carrying a vague association with university lecture halls and chemical formulae scribbled on a chalkboard.

“Sherlock?”

“Two sugars,” muttered Sherlock, peering first down his microscope and then at the laptop screen.

“I already know how you take your tea and I’m not offering to get you any at the moment. Who’s Dobrieuzi?”

“Really, John, googling is not beyond even you.”

“You’re using my laptop.”

“Mine is in my bedroom.”

“Death of the foundation of civilization as we know it!” insisted the telly.

“Sherlock, I’m not getting your laptop for you.”

“I was suggesting that you get it for yourself,” retorted Sherlock, finally raising his head to glare at John.

John glared back for a moment before relenting. “How’s this, then?  I _will_ make you tea, but in return you’re going to explain about this Dobrieuzi fellow.”

“Why...” Sherlock glanced in the direction of the telly. “Oh, that.  Boring.”

“Dobrieuzi,” insisted John from the kitchen.

“Biochemist. First to detail the mechanisms of the chemical reactions responsible for the colour changes in wristbands.  Awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1962 as a result.”

“Ah, right. That sounds vaguely familiar.”

“Not surprising. You should have learned this in medical school.”

John shrugged. “I probably did, but there’s not a lot doctors can _do_ with wristbands.”

“And yet you claim that you don’t delete things,” Sherlock noted as he accepted his mug of tea.

“No, that would be _you_ ,” retorted John, settling into his chair with own mug.

“Instead you just let them drift off until they sound no more than ‘vaguely familiar’ and you have to resort to asking others to ascertain the details.”

“I could come over there, take that tea back and drink it myself.”

Sherlock made a show of gulping down half the mug, then smirked.

“Why’re they burning Dobrieuzi in hell? Figuratively, I mean.”

“Dr Dobrieuzi was also able to replicate the reactions _in vitro_.  Pro-choice activists claimed that his work disproved the idea that colour changes in wristbands were fated or divinely ordained.  Dobrieuzi himself made no such claims.  He was interested only in the science of the process.”

There was no mistaking the note of approval and respect in Sherlock’s voice. John grinned a little and couldn’t resist asking.  “One of your childhood heroes?”

“I received copies of his seminal papers as a gift for my 13th birthday.  The entire bonding process... puzzled me.  I had been asking questions.  The papers were my parents’ response.”

About to take a sip of tea, John stopped and lowered his mug carefully. “You were going on 13, you asked your parents how bonding works and they gave you a set of scientific papers.”

Sherlock shrugged. “The papers were highly informative.  I was impressed with the logic and clarity of Dobrieuzi’s deductions.  Also,” Sherlock’s eyes took on a sly glint, “my parents were not my only source.”

“Let me guess. You also asked Mycroft.”

“He was already 20. It was reasonable that he would have information of his own on the subject.”

John hadn’t asked Harry anything. He’d snuck into her room and helped himself to the magazines she kept stashed underneath her mattress.  There’d been hell to pay when she caught him.

The memory reminded him of his lunch with Harry. “Was Dobrieuzi able to reverse the reactions?”

Sherlock shook his head. “No, not Dobrieuzi.  It’s been done _in vitro_ and on human cadavers since then, but not in living subjects.  The reaction has a high activation energy.  The catalyst that makes it possible in biological systems only works in one direction.”

John could see where this was going. “And the catalysts that drive the reverse reaction are toxic.”  

“Highly so. At least for all such catalysts discovered to date.  The topic is something of a Holy Grail for aspiring biochemists.”

“Had a go at it yourself, did you?” John smiled, imagining a younger Sherlock, eager to follow in his hero’s steps – and possibly win a Nobel of his own.

But Sherlock’s answering shrug was noncommittal. “For a time.  I moved on to other projects.”

The telly had moved on as well and was now broadcasting the results of the latest sports matches.

***

Greg’s gold wristband glinted in the dim light of the pub as he returned from bar with two pints. He handed John’s off and took a long swallow his own before even sitting down.

“Rough day?” asked John.

“I wish. _Long_ day.  It’s as if all the criminals are on holidays.  Nothing’s really happening, so I’ve got no excuse not to catch up on paperwork.  To be honest, I’ll take a good crime scene over paperwork any day.”

John grinned. “You sound like my flatmate.”

“And exactly how bored _is_ Sherlock?”

“Five feet.”

About to take another swallow of beer, Greg stopped and looked at John. “Five feet bored?”

“Five feet in the refrigerator. Next to a carton of leftover take-away.”

Greg thought about it a moment. “Right, left or a mixture?”

John frowned. “Huh.  I suppose I saw but did not observe.  Or, no, wait, I _did_ observe.  I observed the lack of a container for the feet and their proximity to the take-away.”

“Going to be your lunch, was it?”

“It _was_ ,” said John gloomily.  “You know, we’re both barmy, sitting here in a pub talking about body parts.”

Greg shrugged. “A lot of blokes do that.  Except usually it’s body parts attached to attractive women.”

“Attractive _living_ women.”

“Dunno about you, mate, but for me ‘living’ is a prerequisite for attraction.”

John sputtered into his beer as Greg smiled triumphantly. “Okay, that’s one for you.  Let’s talk about something normal.  News, for example.”

Greg’s triumph faded into a groan. “Not the divorce laws.  I’ve been hearing about those at the Yard all day.”

“Hot topic, was it?”

“Police work’s hard on marriages, bonded or not. Pretty much everyone in the Yard is either separated or knows someone who is, often enough for years.  Me, Anderson, lots of others.”

“My sister’s finally getting divorced,” John offered.

Greg shrugged. “Not in a hurry, myself.  If the ex wants to, fine.  If I happen to meet someone...”

“More than fine, I’d hope.”

“Too right! But until then, no hurry.”

“But look, don’t you find that, well...” John waved first in the general direction of Greg’s right wrist and then across the pub towards a small group of women talking with each other.

“Not really. There’s plenty of women out there with black bands.  Like, look at that one there.”

John looked. About his own age, handsome rather than pretty, with straight, dark hair that fell to the freckled shoulders her dress revealed generously.  Black band around her wrist and, when she glanced his way, dark eyes. 

“Or women with gold bands and ex-husbands,” Greg continued. “You get to know what to look for, what to say to let her know you’re in the same boat.”

“And that works.”

“It does for me. Then again, maybe I’m lucky.  With a name like Lestrade I figure I’ve got at least a bit of French in me, and you know what they say about the French.”  Greg winked, and John laughed.

“Are you implying that the Scots are deficient when it comes to pulling women?”

“Not at all. Just – I heard that the kilt was invented so that a Scotsman could get in and do the deed before the lady changed her mind.”

“Oi! Right, just for that I’m spitting in your next pint.”

Greg’s laughter followed John on his way up to the bar, where he collected two more pints – and then almost dropped them as he turned and found the dark-haired woman waiting for him.

“ _Usually_ , I’d wait for you to come to me.”  She had a low, pleasant voice.  “But I’ve got an early flight tomorrow morning, so I’m calling it an evening.  This is for when I get back” – when she leaned forward to tuck a bit of paper in his shirt pocket, John got quite the view – “in two weeks. _If_ you’re still interested.” 

She gave John a cheeky smile and then headed for the exit. At the door, she turned, smiled at him again and then left.

A bit stunned, John glanced at Greg, who gave him a thumbs-up. So, yes, that really _had_ happened.

“Did you put her up to that?” he asked Greg as he set the pints down.

“Not me, mate! She did that on her own steam. If I were you, I’d go home and brush off my kilt.”


	4. Chapter 4

The criminal holiday persisted for more than a week. John binned the feet (three right, two left, none from the same body) when the refrigerator began to smell.  Sherlock sulked, vanished and reappeared two days later with a dead crocodile.  He carried it into his bedroom and slammed the door behind him.  The crocodile had already been mummified, so John decided not to argue.  

The holiday period ended, of course, on John’s day off. Specifically, on the day off that he had earned by covering extra shifts for other doctors.  He’d been looking forward to a long lie-in followed by a leisurely breakfast.  What he got was Sherlock in his bedroom at 8:34 AM, mobile in one hand, stripping over John’s blankets with the other even as he proclaimed that he wasn’t taking the case.

“It’s a break-in with a bare suggestion of robbery, Lestrade. Barely a two...  All right, possibly a three...  Who identified it as a chemical equation?  Your lot don’t have...  All right. _Fine_ ,” Sherlock snarled.  Then he threw the mobile at John, who was still mostly asleep and managed to catch it on pure reflex.

“Get dressed, John, we have a case.”

“Sherlock, it’s my _day off_.”

“Precisely. You have nothing else to do, you’d might as well come with me.”

John sighed. “ _Fine_ ,” he said, mimicking Sherlock’s intonation, “But I’m having breakfast first.”

When he descended the stairs, Sherlock was waiting for him with a cup of tea and a banana. “Breakfast.  Now come on.”

John threw back the tea – a shame, really, as it was both perfectly made and still warm – and followed Sherlock out the door, banana in hand.

***

As crime scenes went, this one was noticeable for the absence of a corpse and the abundance of graffiti, far more than one would expect to find in a university research laboratory. There was also a good deal of smashed glassware and electronic equipment lying about.  Lestrade stood talking with two people in white lab coats, one a greying dark-haired man who looked to be in his sixties and the other a fortyish woman with blonde hair pulled back in a messy ponytail.

Sherlock ignored both the debris and Lestrade’s attempt at introductions, instead making a beeline for the red-scrawled whiteboard.

“Dobrieuzi’s reaction, John!”

“The bond colour research guy?”

“Yes! Hmmm, interesting.  Whoever wrote this did so with his left hand, even though that’s not his dominant hand.”

“His?” asked Lestrade.

“Judging by the height of the writing above ground and the angle at which the marker was held, yes. It could also be an unusually tall woman, however.  The person will likely have red marks down the side of their left hand.  This kind of marker is difficult to wash off.”

“Yeah, that would be more useful if I had enough officers to comb the streets of London checking everyone’s left hands. Anything else?  What do you make of this?”

He indicated the rest of the graffiti covering the walls of the lab, not equations but political slogans written in blue and green. John recognized a few from the protest signs he’d seen on the telly.

Sherlock sniffed. “Red herring.”

“Blue and green herring,” muttered John.

Lestrade frowned slightly. “You mean someone was trying to make us _think_ this was done by pro-bond protesters?”

“It _was_ done by pro-bonders.”  They all turned to look at the blonde woman.  The man who’d been standing beside her was now gone.  “You wouldn’t believe the phone calls and e-mails my colleagues and I have been receiving.  Nasty, threatening things.  We’ve been reporting them as they come in, but it took _this_ ” – her hand gesture took in the entire room – “before the police would pay any notice.  Tens of thousands of pounds of equipment destroyed, including a computer with irreplaceable research data...”

“If you haven’t got the data backed up somewhere else, you deserve to lose it.” Sherlock ignored the woman’s offended gasp.  “And pro-bonders staging a planned incident of vandalism for purposes of intimidation would have come better prepared, not just scribbled slogans with whatever markers they found lying about and smashed things at random.  Was anything stolen?”

“We’re developing a list,” said Lestrade. He waved his hand towards a junior officer and two young women whom John assumed to be post-grads.  They’d probably been charged with the day-to-day grunt work of the project and had a better idea of where everything had been left the day before.  “Dr Campbell-Williams, this is Sherlock Holmes and his partner, Dr John Watson.  They’re...”

“I know who they are,” snapped Campbell-Williams. “I read the papers.  And I would hope, Detective Inspector Lestrade, that you haven’t called in your celebrity consultant for the sole purpose of reassuring us that the police are _finally_ taking the threats to our safety seriously.”

John bristled. “Sherlock’s not window-dressing, Dr Campbell-Williams.  Whatever’s going on here, he’s your best chance of getting to the bottom of it as quickly as possible.”

“Time is of the essence,” put in Sherlock smoothly, “if scientific espionage is involved.”

Lestrade looked startled. “Wait, how did espionage get into this?”   

“Research scientists can be extremely competitive, isn’t that right, Dr Campbell-Williams? That’s as true in biochemistry as in your own field, physics.  They can be competitive to the point of breaking in, copying data and then covering their tracks with a little casual vandalism.  I’ll need a list of other research groups currently doing work comparable to yours.”

_“No one_ is currently doing work comparable to ours, Mr Holmes. No one else has the skills or the expertise.  However, I can get you a list of others engaged in research on the same topic.  My cooperation on this point does _not_ indicate that I agree with your _hypothesis_ that this is not the work pro-bond extremists.”

She swept out the door without waiting for a response.

“Finally,” muttered Sherlock. One of the students giggled.  Sherlock began to sift through the debris of the lab, apparently at random.  The students and the junior officer seemed eager to give him as much room as they could.

“Can you tell what was taken?” asked John in a low voice.

“Very little, I would say. _This_ , for example” – Sherlock indicated a small mound of bits and pieces – “appears to be 97.6% of the remains of a research-grade microscope that would have fetched at least £300 if the thief knew how to contact the right sort of buyer.”

“Are you sure about this espionage thing?” Lestrade put in. “Sounds a bit far-fetched to me.”

Sherlock ignored him and drifted off to a corner, still studying the wreckage. He didn’t bother to look up when Campbell-Williams strode back into the room, a sheet of paper in hand, so John stepped forward instead.  “Thank you, Dr Campbell-Williams.  This will be very helpful.  I assure you that we _and the police_ ” – he glanced sideways at Lestrade, who nodded solemnly – “are taking this matter seriously.”

“ _You_ might be,” muttered Campbell-Williams, glaring at Sherlock.

“May I ask – your research is a continuation of Dr Dobrieuzi’s work?”

Campbell-Williams drew herself up. “Our research, Dr Watson, _builds on_ Dr Dobrieuzi’s work.  We’re poised to take the next step forward, revealing not just how wristbands change colour but _why_.”

John frowned slightly. “I thought that had to do with the subsconscious and finding someone...”

“We leave the subconscious to the psychologists, Dr Watson. Ask yourself this: how do chemical reactions in one person’s brain – which is all that emotions are – affect the chromochemical reactions on another person’s wrist?  How is that information transmitted?”

“Pheromones?” offered Lestrade. Both John and Campbell-Williams turned to stare at him.  “I read this magazine article...”

Campbell-Williams’s lip began to curl. “Bioelectric fields,” suggested John, before she could say anything.

She laughed, a sharp, abrasive sound. “Interesting _hypotheses_ , gentlemen.  But our work here will produce proven facts, not just guesses but _knowledge_.  And once we know what causes wristbands to change colour, we can _cause_ them to change colour.  In either direction.  What will that make of the pro-bonders’ gibberish then?”

“We’re done here,” announced Sherlock, striding for the doorway. Campbell-Williams had to jump out the way at the last minute to avoid being knocked over.

“Nice meeting you,” said John, and went after him.

***

The first thing that caught John’s eye as they left the building was the café across the street. “Breakfast,” he said, attempting to lead Sherlock in that direction.

“You _had_ breakfast.”

“I had a cup of tea and a banana.”

“We have a case!”

“Hardly even a three, unless Dr Campbell-Williams has improved your opinion of it.”

“Still more interesting than...”

“Oi!” They both turned as Lestrade came up behind them.  “I just wanted to say thanks for coming out.  The thing is, the doc’s right, at least partly.  The threatening-message reports got side-tracked, and they shouldn’t have been.  That’s why I came myself on this one.”

“Lestrade,” said Sherlock dangerously, “if you _have_ used me as window-dressing...”

“I owe you the first decent case I get. I promise.  It’s just I don’t have anything at the moment.  Well, we’ve got a body, but it’s an elderly gent who died of a heart attack in an alley.  Paramedics responding to a 999 call found him shortly after midnight.”

“Boring.”

“Yeah, pretty much, even with the missing hand.”

Sherlock perked up noticeably, but Lestrade shook his head. “Amputated decades ago, from the look of it.  Nothing to do with the death.”

“Left hand or right?”

Lestrade shrugged. “Right.  But still nothing to do with...  Oh.  Oh, _hell_.”

Which was John’s opinion exactly, because he’d just lost any chance of breakfast.

“Where?” asked Sherlock.

“Just above where the wristband would have...”

“Not the amputation, the body!”

“Sorry. The morgue at St Bart’s, I think, but...”

“Lestrade, where was the body _found_?”  Sherlock was all but stamping his feet.

“Not far from here, actually. Come on, it’ll be faster to walk with this traffic.  And John?”

“Yes?”

“There’s a sandwich shop across the street from the alley.”

***

Innocent of either yellow tape or police officers, the alley instead offered an abundance of trash and footprints. The rear end was closed off by a wooden fence, with a rusted metal bin in one corner.

“A herd of cattle couldn’t have trampled the ground more thoroughly,” complained Sherlock, squatting down to examine it anyway.

Lestrade shrugged. “The paramedics were focussed on saving the man’s life, not preserving evidence.”

“I thought you said he was already dead when they got here.”

“Yeah, well, they didn’t know that, did they?”

John frowned. “Who made the call?  Myocardial infarctions are rarely instantaneous.  If he was able to call himself in and if the paramedics got here within the average response time, he should still have been alive.”

“The dispatch records show that the response time was a couple minutes longer than normal,” said Lestrade noncommittally.

John winced.

“Yeah, I know. No one seems to know why.  Also, he didn’t make the call himself.  The 999 recording sounds like a much younger fellow, fairly frantic.  The operator was able to keep him on the line for a while, but he hung up just before the ambulance got here.  You can hear the siren approaching and then the recording cuts off.”

“There’s a second set of footprints on top of the paramedics’.” Sherlock glared at Lestrade, who shrugged again.

“That would be the two constables I sent to look for the bloke’s wallet. After the ambulance arrived at St Bart’s, it was discovered that he had no wallet, no ID of any kind, not even keys.  His fingerprints don’t match anything we have on record, and he’s had almost no dental work done.”

“Law-abiding citizens with good dental hygiene are annoying,” commented Sherlock, perfectly straight-faced. Hell, John thought, this was Sherlock.  He might even be serious.

“I’m thinking robbery gone bad,” Lestrade continued. “Young punk with a knife grabs senior and demands his wallet.  Senior has a heart attack.  Punk has enough of a conscience to phone 999 on his PAYG mobile, but takes off before the ambulance arrives so he can’t be arrested.  Takes the wallet with him.”

“And the fact that said senior was apparently on his way home from a spot of vandalism at the university?”

“Where he over-exerted himself, hence the heart attack,” suggested Lestrade.

Sherlock sniffed.

“C’mon, Sherlock, it makes sense.”

“And yet completely fails to delineate the supposed vandal’s motives in attacking that particular lab at the university. I grant that you may have part of the story, but there’s more to it.”  Sherlock strode back into the alley.

“Did the paramedics happen to catch a glimpse of the younger man leaving the alley?” John asked Lestrade.

“They say they don’t remember seeing anyone, but then again, they were focussed on their patient. I can have someone go through the CCTV footage, though.”

“It won’t show the man leaving,” called Sherlock from the rear of the alley. “Look at this.  Dirt from the alley floor on top of the bin, probably left there by footwear.  Scuff marks on the boards near the top of the fence and I think...”  Sherlock fished a pair of tweezers and a plastic bag out of his coat pocket.  “Yes!  Denim fibres caught in the top of the fence as he went over.”

“So we know he was wearing jeans and something on his feet,” said Lestrade. “That’s useful.”

“We’ll know a lot more once we... Ah!”  Sherlock dashed out of the alley.  John and Lestrade looked at each other, then followed – down the street, around two corners, down another street and up an alley that would have seemed to have no chance of connecting with the first one except that it took two sharp right turns.  Trying to keep to the alley’s wall so as not to destroy any tracks, they found themselves wading ankle-deep through trash and what John seriously hoped was only mud.  Twice they had to cut around what appeared to be the remains of temporary cardboard shelters.

Sherlock stopped them well short of the wooden fence. “There!  Don’t trample them.”  Caught in the mud next to the fence were two deep footprints, created by someone landing hard after jumping.

Lestrade swore, fished out his mobile and put a call in for a forensics team. Sherlock was already back-tracking his way along the alley, following the alleged thief’s escape route. “He jumped, landed, he was running, cut around the first corner – oh!  Lestrade!”

“I’ve got a team on the way, Sherlock, can’t you hold on until they get here?”

“No. Look at this.” 

A shred of red fabric hung off the remains of a rusty bolt protruding from the brick near the corner.

“Okay,” said Lestrade, “A young man wearing jeans and something red, probably a jacket. Size 12 feet, looks like.  He hears the sirens getting near, he goes over the fence – I don’t suppose you could spot the wallet or keys anywhere around here, could you?” 

Alas, neither item was to be found, and once the forensics team arrived, Sherlock rapidly became irritated and claimed not to be able to think. “This is a waste of time.  John and I are going to St Bart’s to look at the body.”

Lestrade looked at John, who shrugged. At least Bart’s had a cafeteria.

*** 

At first sight, the body proved to be something of an anticlimax despite the missing right hand. Lestrade’s assessment of the age of the amputation had been correct.  John thought the amputation was clean enough to have been surgical rather than accidental, but he couldn’t be sure.

The left hand bore distinct red smudges along the outer edge as expected. In addition...

“Sherlock, look at this. Numerous small lacerations, with bruising underneath.”

“The stump is lacerated as well, although less bruised due to the heavy scar tissue.”

“As if he’d been pounding on something that broke?”

“Possibly. Molly, did you remove any material from the lacerations?”

“Splinters of glass and plastic. I sent them for analysis of any residues.”

“Well done!” Sherlock’s tone was genuinely warm, and Molly smiled.

“I do know my job, Sherlock. I also sent a sample of the splinters from his clothes.”

“Ah. Let me see the clothes.”

“Please,” muttered John under his breath. Sherlock didn’t seem to have heard him, but Molly shot him an amused look.

The man’s clothes, stored separately in a plastic bag, smelled of the alley where the body had been found. Despite the stench, Sherlock examined them closely – jacket, shirt, trousers.  The sleeves of the jacket were peppered with small cuts and the remains of the splinters Molly had mentioned.  The shirt and trousers bore various stains.

“Someone looks after him, but they haven’t been doing so for at least the past week,” murmured Sherlock.

“Had a fight with his wife?” suggested John and received Sherlock’s best “you are an idiot” look for his pains.

“Except for his caregiver’s visits, he lives alone. Bachelor, separated or widowed.”

In the end, however, there was nothing to indicate that the man, who looked to be in his late sixties, had died of any cause other than the obvious myocardial infarction.

Sherlock hailed a cab when they left Bart’s, and John thought they were going back to Baker Street. Instead, the cab let them off near a small café on a quiet side street where the man who appeared to the owner seemed overjoyed to see Sherlock. The result was a very nice goat cheese and tomato sandwich with a side salad of mixed greens for John and mugs of excellent coffee for both of them.

John made note of the café’s location. For a man who was married to his work, Sherlock was showing something of a talent for finding good places to bring a date.

“So, Campbell-Williams’s a physicist rather than a biochemist. Odd partnership, don’t you think?”

“Not necessarily. It depends on her areas of interest.  Her work in the States should tell us something.”

“Hold on, she didn’t sound American?”

“Obviously she’s _not_.  Raised in England, mainly but not exclusively in Lancashire.  Spent a significant portion of her adult life in the States, you can tell by her vowels, but returned to the UK some years ago – more than three, less than ten.”

“Gold band.”

Sherlock narrowed his eyes. “Not your usual type.”

“I didn’t mean... I’m not always on the pull, you know.  And in any case, _gold_ band.”

“Like Lestrade’s. Campbell-Williams separated from her spouse – who _is_ American – approximately the same time she returned to Britain.  It’s not proven but highly likely that the spouse remained in the States.  Aren’t you done eating yet?”

“Obviously I’m _not_ ,” replied John in his best imitation of Sherlock’s posh accent, taking another forkful of salad and enjoying Sherlock’s eye roll as he munched. 

***

The reason for Sherlock’s impatience – as if he ever needed a reason – became apparent when they got back to Baker Street. Sherlock withdrew a fistful of documents from the inside of his Belstaff with a flourish, threw the Belstaff itself in approximately the direction of a vacant coat hook and then appropriated both the coffee table and John’s laptop, settling in for what appeared to be a major research effort.

“Sherlock?”

“Busy.”

“What are those?”

“ _Busy._ ”

John angled closer and peered over Sherlock’s shoulder. “They’re reprints of journal articles.  Sherlock, did you steal these from the lab?”

“They’re _reprints_.  The researchers can get more copies.”

“They’re _evidence_ and you removed them from the crime scene.”

“Neither Lestrade nor anyone on his team is capable of recognizing them as evidence, so they won’t be missed.”

“Sherlock...”

“Busy.”

As a former soldier, John could recognize a losing battle. He settled in himself with the newspaper he hadn’t had a chance to read that morning.  More rhetoric – although little actual news – about the divorce laws.  South Africa and Australia were reported to be on the verge of changing their laws as well.  Canada already had.  An op-ed piece declared it highly unlikely that the States would follow suit any time soon due to the number of American politicians who drew their support from right-wing religious groups.  John thought of Campbell-Williams and set the piece aside for Sherlock.

After a mid-afternoon cuppa used the last of the milk, John decided to combine a constitutional with a trip to Tesco’s. He eschewed the familiar proximity of Regent’s Park in favour of the slightly more ambitious goal of Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, finally stopping for a break when he reached the Round Pond, where he took advantage of a vacant bench to watch the swans and geese for awhile.

It seemed to him that as he walked, he saw more people with black wristbands than he used to. Or perhaps he just noticed them more.  Before he’d married, his eyes had been drawn to the silver wristbands of the unbonded and sometimes to the gold wristbands of (presumably) happy couples.  Now he saw black-banders everywhere and found himself wondering about the gold-banders he noticed.  How many were like Harry, Greg, Campbell-Williams?

And how had this come about? His parents had been married for decades.  John _thought_ they’d been happy together.  The same had been true for most of his childhood friends.  There’d been a few notable exceptions.  One boy’s parents seemed to spend all their time yelling at each other.  One girl’s father spent long periods away from home, and her mother always looked sad.  But generally marrying their soulmates seemed to work out for most people.

Were people changing faster now, so that they outgrew their soulmates, as Harry had? Certainly the ways people communicated with each other changed faster these days.  Personal computers, the Internet and social networking had not been part of John’s childhood.  He’d been almost 15 when mobiles first came on the market.  Now they were ubiquitous.  

John entertained a brief fantasy of Sherlock in a world without mobiles. He’d probably recruit London’s pigeons to be his communication network.  There’d be coops on the roof of 221B, and Sherlock would have at least one or two pigeons riding along on the shoulders of his Belstaff at any given time.  The dry cleaning bills would be horrendous.

Smiling to himself, John began the trip home, stopping at Tesco’s as he neared Baker Street. Milk, bread.  The Weetabix that Sherlock sometimes ate, milkless and drizzled with honey.  Hmmm, better get some honey as well.  And eggs, because Sherlock would sometimes eat those if John cooked them.

The shopping basket was glaringly devoid of produce, so John added a few apples, the Cox’s Orange Pippins that he himself liked and the Bramleys that Sherlock ate raw just to be contrary. When had his grocery shopping become all about Sherlock’s tastes? _Again_ , because for five years Sherlock had not been a factor.  And yet here John was, drawn back into Sherlock’s orbit _again_ , buying Bramleys that would never see the inside of an oven.

Shaking his head, John joined the queue for the chip-and-pin machine.  

***

 “...entanglement,” pronounced Sherlock as John came through the door with his shopping bags.

“Whatever you’ve been telling me, I haven’t been here to hear it,” he informed Sherlock as he brought the bags into the kitchen and started trying to find non-toxic locations to store the groceries. “I’ve been gone almost...”

“Three hours. Walked through Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens to the Round Pond, sat there approximately twenty minutes.  There are still flakes of paint from the bench on your jeans.”

“I don’t suppose you’d like to stop looking at my arse and come help put these away?”

Oddly enough, Sherlock turned slightly pink before turning away and continuing his previous one-sided conversation. “Helen Campbell-Williams specialized in the study of quantum entanglement.”

“That’s when two particles are in different places and you do something to one of them and the other reacts, yeah?” John felt proud of himself when Sherlock raised his eyebrows.  Not _all_ the telly he watched was trash telly, so there!

“Very good, John. She earned her doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and shortly after married David Wentworth, who’d just published a best-selling novel.  Unfortunately, his later novels failed to achieve the same success.  Five years ago, Campbell-Williams returned to the UK.  Less than two years later, Wentworth began to be seen frequently in the company of up-and-coming photographer Cheyenne Paul.”

“Any chance that Wentworth might be responsible for the threatening messages Campbell-Williams received?”

“Unlikely, since other staff members received them as well. And Wentworth appears to have little motive to be so vindictive. _He’s_ the one who has a new partner.”  Sherlock fiddled briefly with John’s laptop and a photo, presumably of Cheyenne Paul, appeared on the screen.  John gave a low whistle.

“Exactly my point,” said Sherlock drily. He fiddled some more, and the photo changed.  “This is Campbell-Williams attending a conference at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg last year.”

“Wait a moment, that man with her – he was in the lab this morning.”

“Dr Robert Foucault,” said Sherlock, pronouncing the French r’s in “Ro-bear” faultlessly, at least to John’s ear. “Studied with Edward Blessington, who in turn was one of Dobrieuzi’s students.”

“It’s a bloody dynasty,” commented John.

“Quite. Foucault has worked on and off in the field of chromochemistry throughout his life.  However, he didn’t appear to be making any great progress until he met Campbell-Williams at a conference in the States three years before she returned to the UK.  Following that meeting, the entire direction of his research changed.  In the next paper he published, he gave credit to Campbell-Williams for her assistance.  In the next paper after that, published shortly before she left the States, she was listed as a co-author.”

“That’s what she was talking about in the lab,” John realized. “How is chemical information transmitted between two individuals?  Foucault and Campbell-Williams think it has to do with quantum entanglement.”

“To over-simplify, yes. Foucault delivered an update on their work at the Heidelberg conference.  What’s interesting is that although he’s the senior researcher, it was Campbell-Williams who was quoted as making several apparently off-the-cuff remarks to the effect that practical results were imminent.”

John frowned. “Practical results as in, practical for people wanting to change their band colour?  They’ve done all the testing required for that?  Because I think I would have seen something about it in the medical journals.”

“And you haven’t. Campbell-Williams’ field of study rarely involves human subjects or really, any living subjects at all.  It’s possible that she didn’t understand the complications involved.  The remarks were made once, at a reception.  She may or may not have ingested some unknown amount of alcohol before making them.  However, they were picked up by the local popular press because unlike like most of what transpired at the conference, they were understandable by and interesting to the general public.”

“The local popular press being...”

“Die Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung. The fact that the remarks didn’t spread from there to other media outlets – and specifically English-language media outlets – suggests that they may have been quashed.  However, they _were_ published and would have been available on-line at least briefly, since the newspaper has a digital edition.”

“Someone read them.”

“A great many people had the opportunity to read them, John. That may or may not be relevant to our case.”

“What about... You said earlier that the ex-husband was the one with a new partner.  But Campbell-Williams and Foucault met three years before she left the States.”

Sherlock snorted. “Look at the photo and use your eyes, John.”

“Ah, they’re standing next to each other, but not particularly close. They’re turned slightly away from each other, focussed on the other people around them.  They obviously didn’t colour coordinate their outfits.”

“Obviously. How is he holding his right wrist?”

“Oh, that’s odd.   She’s standing to his right.  He’s holding his wrist horizontal and slightly out from his body, almost like – a barrier?  And...  Sherlock can you enlarge this?”

Smirking, the detective did so.

“His wristband is still silver,” realized John. “Sherlock, the man’s in his sixties.”

“Foucault was married briefly in his forties. The marriage was annulled after a few years, as allowed by law in cases where the spouses aren’t soulmates.”

“That kind of marriage is unusual, at least in Europe and North America.”

“Nowadays, yes. Historically, no.  And ‘unusual’ doesn’t mean non-existent.”

John glanced at his flatmate and hazarded a guess. “Your parents.”

“Were companions rather than soulmates and have nothing to do with the case. Besides Foucault's marriage, I haven’t been able to find mention of any other relationships that aren’t strictly professional – as is, for example, his relationship with Campbell-Williams”

“You’re saying that except for the fling in his forties, Foucault is married to his work,” said John, keeping his face perfectly straight.

“He does appear to be fairly intelligent,” replied Sherlock, equally deadpan.

“So we have... what? A celibate biochemist.  A physicist who talks out of turn when she’s had a few and who has an ex-husband who’s dating a fit-looking photographer and who hasn’t published a successful book in years.  Threatening messages and a vandalized lab.  The bloke who apparently did the vandalism died of a heart attack shortly afterwards.  We don’t know who he is because a younger fellow took his wallet, called 999 and fled.”

“An accurate summary,” intoned Sherlock. He settled into his chair with his legs outstretched, his hands together and his fingers to his lips.

“Oi, do you want supper before you escape into your mind palace?”

“Case.”

Which meant no. _John_ wanted supper, at any rate.  He dug around in the freezer compartment and extracted a chicken pie.  Then he thought of pigeons.  He put the pie back and went looking for the take-out menus instead.


	5. Chapter 5

Sherlock spent the better part of the next four days either in his mind palace or communing with his pile of purloined reprints and the pair of laptops, his own having joined John’s on the coffee table. John watched him jump from one machine to the other, audibly impatient when pages were slow to load.  Peering over Sherlock’s shoulder as he delivered tea, John caught glimpses of what appeared to be yet more journal articles, occasional media coverage and once, a statement of financial transactions embellished with dollar signs rather than pound symbols.  He decided not to ask about that last.

Molly texted to let them know that the analysis of the splinters had failed to turn up anything of note. Sherlock sighed deeply and collapsed on the sofa.  He roused briefly when someone from the university called, then pronounced the call boring and collapsed again.    

John woke in the night to hear Sherlock playing his violin, not any particular melody but rather long sequences of notes that sometimes drifted, sometimes darted about as if reflecting the player’s thoughts. Sherlock drank tea when John made it, disdained toast despite the fact that John had made it and grudgingly allowed John to inspect his arms, which never bore more than two nicotine patches between them.

John recognized that it was entirely possible that Sherlock could simply have placed the patches on other parts of his body. However, he drew the line at expanding his inspections.  Drew it in terms of actions, anyway.  His thoughts developed an alarming tendency to wander across that line on their own, without seeking his permission. 

Bloody hell, it wasn’t as if he hadn’t already seen most of Sherlock’s body already, at least from the hips up and the thighs down. He’d spent enough time patching the man up after various misadventures.  He knew that Sherlock carried scars from Mary’s bullet and from the surgery he’d needed afterwards.  Other scars on Sherlock’s back suggested that he’d been beaten.  John knew those hadn’t been there before Sherlock went hunting down the remains of Moriarty’s empire.

But when had John stopped being able to think of Sherlock’s body strictly in medical terms, as he would any other patient’s? When had his imagination begun to insist on drawing in the unknown territory between hip and thigh?  He remembered Buckingham Palace, with Sherlock sitting close to him clad only in a sheet, but the memory kept changing.  In his imagination, Sherlock pulled a corner of the sheet aside, revealing a nicotine patch like a bizarre beauty spot on the inside of his milky-white upper thigh.

“It’s a one-patch problem, doctor,” purred the posh baritone.

Just as John was about to confirm that there was indeed only one patch, his mobile rang. He jerked awake, cursing Sherlock’s violin and the slow day at the clinic as he grabbed the phone.

“Hello?”

_“John? It’s Greg.  Look, I know you’re at work, but can you get off and come down to St Bart’s?”_

“Oh, hell, what’s he done now?”

_“Nothing yet. I’m calling him next.  It’s just, we had a woman call in a missing person’s report for her uncle.  She described him as being in his sixties – and missing his right hand.”_

Suddenly, John felt a lot more alert. “So you’ve got her coming in to identify the body.”

_“Right, and we’re going to ask her a few questions. I want Sherlock here, he’ll pick up on things the rest of us miss.  But... she’s not a suspect, y’know?”_

“You want me there to try and restrain Sherlock. Greg...”

_“I know I’m asking a favour, John.”_

“It’s not so much that. It’s just – when have you ever known me to _successfully_ restrain Sherlock?”

_“I hear you, but you’re our best hope, mate.”_

John sighed. “All right, I’m on my way.  Uh, you might want to give Sherlock a chance to shower before he comes in.  It’s been a few days.”

_“Some things never change. See you when you get here.”_

***

Sherlock arrived at St Bart’s morgue shortly after John, pristine, with slightly damp curls, looking... very nice. Lestrade was waiting for both of them while Molly hovered nervously in the background.

“All right,” said Lestrade, “this is what we’ve got. Miranda Caustlin goes on holidays for a couple of weeks.  She returns to find a series of message on her house phone from her uncle’s caregiver.  The caregiver hadn’t seen any sign of him for a few days and was getting concerned.”

“Caregiver?” asked Sherlock.

“Yeah, the uncle’s in his late sixties, has a heart condition and is in the early stages of mild dementia, on medication for both conditions. No other family except Caustlin and her teen-aged son.  He has his own flat.  A caregiver comes in three times a week to fix meals, keep the place clean and make sure he’s okay.  Caustlin does the same thing on the caregiver’s off days.  Actually, it sounded as if she comes by pretty much every day, but she specifically asked her son to visit on the caregiver’s off days while she was gone.”

John frowned. “She left her son on his own?”

Lestrade shrugged. “The kid’s 16.  A bit young for it, maybe, but not excessively so.  Anyway, she goes over to the uncle’s flat.  Everything looks okay, but the uncle – his name’s Donald McKinsey, by the way – isn’t there.  So she phones in a missing person’s report.  When asked for identifying marks, she mentions that McKinsey’s right hand was amputated decades ago.  Because of the hand, the officer taking the report referred her to me.  I asked her to meet us here.”

“She knows she’s coming in to identify a body?” asked John.

“Obvious,” retorted Sherlock. “She’s been asked to come to a morgue.”

“I’m not asking you. Greg?”

“Yeah, she knows. She knows that the man who’s probably her uncle died in an alley of a heart attack and that we couldn’t identify him because his wallet was missing.  That’s _all_ she knows.”

“Good,” Sherlock said.

“Look, Sherlock, this woman’s already dealing with a rough situation. After she’s identified the body, I’m going to ask her some questions.  I’d like you to observe her responses and, well, anything else about her that might be helpful.  But I’d _also_ like you to try and avoid traumatizing her further.”

“Which is why you asked John to come.”

“Er, yes.”

“If I censor _myself_ , then John will have wasted his afternoon by coming here.  Therefore...”

“Oh, no, you don’t,” interrupted John. “You do _not_ get to use my presence as an excuse to act like a complete git!”

He had more to say on the subject, but just then the door opened slowly and a hesitant female voice asked, “DI Lestrade?” The woman who followed the voice was about John’s own age, handsome despite her reddened eyes, with straight, dark hair that fell to her shoulders.  She was wearing different clothes, a white top and dark blue slacks, but John recognized her immediately: the woman from the pub.

She apparently recognized him as well, or at least her eyes widened slightly when she saw him. Then Lestrade stepped forward and she turned her attention to the DI.  A gangly teenage boy, presumably her son, trailed sullenly in her wake, trying not to trip over his feet.  He’d apparently undergone a recent growth spurt, for his wrists dangled from the sleeves of his black windcheater.

“Ms Caustlin,” said Lestrade, “Thank you for coming down. I know this is...”

“Please, Inspector, I know you mean well, but... Can we get this over with?”

Sherlock’s look of approval was rather appalling to anyone who realized he hadn’t the least idea as to _why_ Caustlin might want to “get this over with.”  And then go home and have a good cry, probably.

Lestrade nodded at Molly, who rolled the waiting gurney forward and gently drew back the sheet covering the face.

Miranda Caustlin burst into fresh tears and extracted a wad of tissues from her purse. “Yes.  That’s him, that’s Uncle Don.  He’s really...”  Her mouth formed a letter D but she was crying too hard to go on.  She turned towards her son, who looked lost in the face of his mother’s sorrow but who put an awkward arm around her shoulders.

Molly covered the corpse’s face again and stammered, “There’s chairs in my office. I mean, to sit on.  If you want to.”

“Thank you, Dr Hooper,” Lestrade replied gravely, and he herded them all in the proper direction. Molly muttered something about coffee and vanished.

There was a brief stand-off in the office as Lestrade, John and Miranda’s son all tried to pull out a chair for her simultaneously. The son won, glaring at the two older men as if instinctively protecting his mother from their attentions. But by the time Molly returned with a round of coffees, they’d all got more or less settled.  Sherlock had chosen not to sit but rather to lean against the wall next to the whiteboard.  John figured that maybe he thought the angle was better for observation.

“Ms Caustlin,” Lestrade began after Molly had left, “Due to the circumstances in which your uncle was found, we’re going to have to ask you some questions. If you prefer, we can wait until later and you can come down to New Scotland Yard?”

Caustlin shook her head to indicate “no” and then took a large sip of the coffee her son had doctored for her – no sugar, just a touch of milk.

“Right, then. These gentlemen are consultants with the Yard, Sherlock Holmes and Dr John Watson.”

Caustlin glanced at each of them but if she recognized their names, she didn’t show it as far as John could tell.

“Now, you mentioned that you’ve just returned from holidays?”

“Yes, I flew out to Spain on the 5th and didn’t get back until the evening of the day before yesterday.”

“And what did you discover on your return?”

“Angela – that’s Uncle Don’s caregiver, Angela Desimone – had left two messages on my house phone. One was on Wednesday evening.  She’d been in that day to take care of things, and Don hadn’t been there.”

Lestrade looked up from the notes he was jotting. “What days does Ms Desimone usually come in?”

“Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.”

“And was it unusual for Mr McKinsey to be absent when she arrives?”

“It isn’t his usual habit, but he’s allowed to come and go as he pleases. He tends to stay close to home in any case, and he’s been doing so well on the new medications, his doctor said...  Oh.”  McCaustlin stopped, looking stricken.  “It doesn’t matter now, does it?  How well he’s, he _was_ doing?  None of it matters now.”  Her mouth wobbled as she dabbed at her eyes.

Lestrade gave her a moment, then asked gently, “Do you wish to continue?”

“Yes.” She sniffed.  “Yes, I do.”

“You said there were two messages.”

“Yes. The second one was a bit more worrisome.  Angela had left it on Friday.  Usually when she comes in, she prepares meals for Uncle Don.  Sandwiches, things he can heat up in the microwave, that sort of thing.  When she came in on Friday, none of the food she’d left on Wednesday had been eaten.  And everything in the flat was precisely as she’d left it after cleaning, even in the bedroom and bathroom.  As far as she could tell, no one had been there at all since Wednesday.  She’d thought of phoning the police herself, but of course, she’s not family, and she knew I was coming back on Sunday.  Inspector, she had no way of knowing what had happened.”

“No, of course not. Ms Desimone’s reaction is quite understandable.  What did you do after listening to the messages?”

“I tried phoning Uncle Don, but there was no answer. It was already getting late, so I didn’t think much of that one way or the other.  Then I phoned Angela and told her not to bother going in the next day, I would go myself.  And I asked Tyler if Don had been there on the days he’d gone in.”

“Tyler is your son?”

Caustlin glanced at the youth slumped in his seat next to her, apparently engrossed in a study of the floor in front of his chair, and smiled slightly for the first time. “Yes.”

“Tyler...” began Lestrade, but Sherlock shifted slightly. John caught the quick furrow of his brows and the infinitesimal shake of his head.  Apparently Lestrade did too.  “Ms Caustlin, we’ll want to ask Tyler a few questions later, but for now, did he have anything unusual to report?”

Caustlin had apparently missed the byplay. “No, he said his uncle had been fine.”

“So on Monday, you went to your uncle’s flat?”

“Yes. It was... nothing was as Angela described it.  The food she’d prepared was gone.  There were dirty dishes in the sink, the bedcovers were rumpled.  The flat was very tidy, but it definitely looked as if someone had been there.”

“And what did you do next?”

“I phoned the police.”

“Thank you, Ms Caustlin. Mr Holmes, Dr Watson, did you have any additional questions?”  Lestrade held Sherlock’s eyes as he said this.  John could practically hear what Lestrade didn’t add – “ _and they’d better be relatively civil ones._ ”

Sherlock pried himself off the wall. “Ms Caustlin, how did your uncle lose his hand?”

Lestrade closed his eyes briefly and appeared to be counting backwards from ten, but Caustlin answered steadily enough. “It was done surgically.  I was only a few years old at the time.  My mother – his older sister – told me later that he had some sort of bone disease but that it wasn’t hereditary.”

“Was he married?”

“Not by then. His wife had passed on.”

There was a slight squeak from the whiteboard. Sherlock had scribbled a couple of characters in red marker.  They looked slightly familiar, but John couldn’t place them.  Lestrade and Caustlin looked similarly blank.  But Tyler...  Tyler had finally looked up from the floor, and his eyes were wide.

“Just a few notes,” explained Sherlock with an eerie smile. “It’s a shorthand of my own devising.  Ms Caustlin, did you count the remaining tablets of each of your uncle’s medications?”

Caustlin seemed a bit puzzled by the sudden change in subject, and she wasn’t the only one. “Uh, no.  I didn’t.  That didn’t occur to me.”

“So you don’t know if he’d been taking them in your absence or not.”

“Why wouldn’t he? Tyler, did Uncle Don say anything to you about skipping his medications?”

The teen, head down again, mumbled something in the direction of the floor.

“Mr Caustlin,” said Lestrade mildly, “I’m going to have to ask you speak up.”

Tyler raised his chin, his expression sullen. “He said they made his stomach hurt.”

He looked away from Lestrade to watch as Sherlock traced another character on the whiteboard. When Sherlock turned suddenly, their eyes met.  “ _All_ the medications made his stomach hurt, Mr Caustlin, or was there one in particular he avoided taking?”

Tyler swallowed audibly. “He didn’t say.”

“But you made sure he was taking them all, right?” Caustlin asked her son, breaking the focus between him and Sherlock.

John caught Lestrade’s wince at the way she’d phrased the question. Any teenager would answer that tone almost reflexively.  Sure enough, Tyler relaxed just a bit and answered, “Yeah.  Yeah, of course.  He needs his meds, you said that before you left.”  He was back to looking at the floor.

Sherlock had another question. “Ms Caustlin, who has access to the messages on your home phone?”

Again, Caustlin looked puzzled. “Just Tyler and I.”

“And is there a way to tell if someone else has listened to a message before you yourself have done so?”

“No, there isn’t,” said Caustlin shortly. “Look, Mr Holmes, if you’re trying to imply something about my son, you can stop right there.  Tyler _loved_ his granduncle, he would never...”  

Sherlook was scribbling a few more characters of what was beginning to look like a chemical equation. John glanced at Tyler.  The youth was watching the detective’s every move.  John looked back at Sherlock’s writing, trying to place the characters, the equation, written in red marker on a whiteboard...  Oh.  He looked at Lestrade and found Lestrade looking back at him.  The inspector shifted his gaze towards the whiteboard, then back to John.  He raised a questioning brow.  John nodded.

Sherlock had stopped writing and was addressing Caustlin. “Ms Caustlin, I’m implying nothing at all.  I’m merely asking questions, and I have only one left.  What colour was the new windcheater you bought Tyler recently?”

“It was... red, I think. Yes, red.” Sherlock began to scribble again as she spoke.  “But what does that have to do with...”

Caustlin broke off as Tyler shoved his chair back, jumped to his feet and made a break for the door. Sherlock, already standing, managed to get to the door in front of him while John and Lestrade were still getting up.  The teen threw a punch at Sherlock’s face.  Untrained and sloppy, it would have done little damage on its own, but there was enough force behind it to knock Sherlock’s head against the door frame with an audible _thunk_.

John reacted without thinking, grabbing the teen and pinning him against the wall with his arm up behind his own back. “Hold still!  Just hold still now and you’ll be fine.  Don’t...”  The teen tried to twist away and yelped.  “Don’t try to pull away or you’ll dislocate your shoulder.  Sherlock, are you...”

“I’m fine, John,” replied Sherlock, rubbing the back of his head. “However, Lestrade is about to remind you that Tyler is both a civilian _and_ a minor.”

Oh _shit_.

“I can speak for myself, Sherlock,” growled Lestrade. “John, if you’ll allow me to take custody of Mr Caustlin?”

“Custody?” exclaimed Miranda Caustlin. “You’re not arresting...”

Sherlock was still talking. “Even if he had managed to escape, he’s already left sufficient fingerprints on a variety of surfaces in this room...”

“It wasn’t my fault he died,” yelled Tyler. “It was the fucking paramedics!”  And he burst into tears.

There was a brief moment in which Tyler’s sobs were the only sound heard.

Lestrade’s grip on Tyler’s arm was firm, but his voice was curiously gentle. “Tyler Caustlin, I arrest you on charges of criminal damage and burglary.”

“We didn’t steal any...”

“Tyler, shut up!” yelled Caustlin.

Lestrade continued inexorably. “You do not have to say anything.  However, it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court.  Anything you do say may be given in evidence.  And now, Ms Caustlin, gentlemen, I suggest that we continue this at New Scotland Yard.” 

***

The Caustlins had taken the Tube to St Bart’s, so Lestrade drove them to the Yard, leaving Sherlock and John to take a cab. As it turned out, this was probably just as well.

“Miranda Caustlin gave you her phone number while you and Gavin were in the pub two weeks ago,” stated Sherlock as the cab pulled into traffic.

John checked his jacket pockets and then glared at his flatmate. “Sherlock, we’ve _had_ the talk about respecting private property.”

“You weren’t going to call her anyway.”

“You don’t know that!”

“I removed the paper with the number on it from your jacket approximately two hours and twenty minutes after you arrived home. If you haven’t noticed it missing until now, your interest in using it was minimal at best...”

“Bloody hell, have you been making a habit of going through my pockets?”

“...and very likely non-existent. Besides, she’s not dangerous enough for you,” finished Sherlock.  A moment later, he added, “Why are you staring at me?”

“Because... Look, I _might_ have called her.  She’d told me she was going on holidays.  I might have been meaning to call her after she got back.  No, let me finish!  Or maybe I _had_ forgot about it, but I would have found it the next time I wore that jacket.  I might have called her then.  The point is, you can’t be going through my pockets.  You’re not my... ” _Wife. Girlfriend.  Boyfriend._ “...mother, Sherlock,” John finished weakly.

“Unlikely, considering that I’m both younger than you and male. _My_ point regarding Ms Caustlin’s level of danger still stands.  However,” and here Sherlock paused, turned slightly away, looked almost...  Awkward?  “We’re on our way to the Yard.  Lestrade will have got her number for the case, so I should be able to retrieve it for you.”

“Right, as if she’s still going to be interested after I almost dislocated her son’s arm in front of her,” John sighed. “Thanks for the offer, though.”

“Why did you do that?”

“Why what?”

“Assault Tyler Caustlin. He was unarmed and it was already evident from his attempt at a punch that he doesn’t know how to fight.  You had to know that I wasn’t in any real danger.”

John could have argued about their respective definitions of “real danger,” but Sherlock was right.

“I over-reacted.”

“But...”

“Just leave it, okay? Please?”

Sherlock stared at him a moment and then, thankfully, turned to look out the window.

The truth was that the moment John had thought Sherlock might be hurt, what John _knew_ became less important than what he _felt_.

John had shot a man for Sherlock once, out of friendship and admiration and loyalty. He’d do it again. That bit was the same. But he was beginning to think his reasons have changed – or not so much changed, as grown deeper roots and more tangled branches. He had been surprised and pleased by Miranda’s attention in the pub – and then he’d almost immediately forgot about her. He’d enjoyed the assurance that he could still catch an attractive woman’s eye, but he’d been far less interested in the woman herself. What that said about him was... something he didn’t want to think about too deeply.


	6. Chapter 6

By the time they reached the Yard, both Caustlins had calmed down somewhat. Lestrade got them all settled in what he carefully did not refer to as an interrogation room, made a feeble joke about the coffee at the Yard being worse than that at St Bart’s and then turned to Tyler Caustlin.

“Now, Mr Caustlin, if you’d begin at the beginning. Your mother left for Spain...”

Tyler looked grateful for the cue. “She’d said to make sure to visit Uncle Don, especially on Ms Desimone’s off days, so I was doing that.  I, uh, didn’t do so much cleaning and stuff.”  John saw Miranda’s mouth twitch. 

“Mostly we watched telly. Uncle Don liked the news channel.  And he had this old desktop, he’d use it to access news sites, even foreign ones.”

“Any particular countries?” asked Sherlock with mild interest.

“Uh, not foreign like Arabic or Chinese. I could read the letters, but not the words.”

Sherlock’s look spoke volumes – in a dozen different languages.

“The thing is, Uncle Don was smart. I mean, he was demented, but he was still smart.  You can’t just, you know...” Tyler trailed off.

“We’re not here to make assumptions or judgements about your granduncle, Tyler,” said Lestrade calmly. “We just want to find out what happened.  Did you and your granduncle do anything besides watch telly?”

“Yeah, we went for walks. Not really going anywhere, just walking, sometimes even for more than an hour.  And then we’d stop somewhere and he’d buy me a be-”  Here Tyler cut off with a hasty glance at his mother.  Unfortunately for him, she’d already caught the gist of his statement.

“ _You’re_ underage, Tyler, and Uncle Don wasn’t supposed to have alcohol,” she snapped.

“I told him that!” the teen protested. “But he said he could as long as he didn’t mix it with his meds!”

“You said he was taking his meds!”

Tyler glared sullenly at the floor, but remembered to speak up. “I told him to take them.  He said they made his stomach hurt and he didn’t have to take orders from a kid and you’d never know unless I was a rat and told you.  What was I supposed to do?  Pill him like we pill the cat?”

Miranda opened her mouth, but Lestrade was already speaking. “Easy now.  We’re here to find out what happened, not assign blame.  Right?”  He caught Miranda’s eye, and she subsided.  “So you and your granduncle watched telly, went for walks and shared the occasional pint.  Anything else happen?”

“Not... not right away. But these news stories started appearing more and more and, I dunno.  For some reason they drove Uncle Don spare.”

“New stories?” prodded Lestrade.

“About the divorce laws and the protests and stuff. Especially when they interviewed protestors and the protestors started in against science and scientists.”

“Your granduncle took offense?”

“No, he agreed with ‘em! He’d start going on about how scientists don’t really know how bonds work and they don’t know what they’re doing and how people don’t know what goes on in labs.  He’d get more and more riled up.  And then he’d stomp away from the telly and head for his computer, and he’d be working at the computer and muttering to himself.  It seemed like every time it happened, he took longer to calm down.”

“He’d been doing so well on his new meds,” said Miranda sadly, so softly she was almost speaking to herself.

“He wouldn’t take them, Mum.” Tyler hesitated. “I’m sorry.  Maybe I could’ve tried harder or something?  I just...  I didn’t know what to do.”

“Taking care of seniors with dementia is challenging for anyone,” John put in gently. “Did you do anything to try and help your granduncle calm down?”

“I tried asking him questions about labs.”

The adults around the table frowned. “I would think,” said Sherlock, “the subject would have exacerbated his emotional state.”

“Well, he wouldn’t talk about anything else. I thought maybe he used to work in a lab?”

Miranda shook her head. “Not that I ever heard.”

“Anyway, I thought he did and that if I could get him talking about past stuff, like his job, he would calm down. And it worked, pretty much.”

Sherlock leaned forward slightly. “What sort of questions did you ask?”

Tyler seemed puzzled by the question. “You know, about labs.  Like the stuff in them and what it’s used for.”

“Anything else?” And then, in response to Tyler’s blank stare, “Anything about the people who work in labs?”

“Oh, like scientists? Yeah, I asked about them too.”

John frowned. Tyler’s response was hardly convincing, but it seemed like an odd thing to lie about. 

“I see,” said Sherlock. “And asking questions of this sort helped calm your granduncle?”

“Yeah. He’d stop ranting and listen and answer, pretty sensibly too.  So that was all right and I thought we were going to make it through until Mum got back.  And then...”  Tyler stopped.

After a moment, Lestrade asked patiently, “What happened, Tyler?”

“It was Tuesday. I made us beans on toast for supper and we were watching telly, and suddenly Uncle Don stood up and said he was going to visit someone he used to know.  He was set on it, put on his jacket and everything.  So I figured the best thing to do was to lock up the flat and go with him.”

“Did he say whom he wanted to visit?”

“Some kind of doctor, I thought, except it turned out not exactly. Dr...  Uh, I’m sorry.”  Tyler’s face reddened.  “It sounded like fuck all.”

“Dr Foucault,” said Sherlock with complete seriousness.

“Yeah!” said the teen gratefully. “How did you know...  Oh.”  His face fell.  “You already know what happened, don’t you?  That’s how you know what Uncle Don wrote.  That’s how you knew to write the same thing back at the hospital.”  His tone turned petulant.  “Why are you even asking me?”

“We need you to tell us what _you_ know, Tyler, in your own words,” Lestrade said firmly.  “You and your granduncle left his flat Tuesday evening.  Do you remember the approximate time?”

“Seven, maybe? Maybe later.  And then we walked for a while.  Uncle Don was walking, I was just sort of going with him.”

“And where did you go?”

“To the university. Uncle Don said that Dr, uh, Dr Fook-oh?  That Dr Fooko worked there, he’d looked it up on the Internet.  And I said it was late, Dr Fooko must’ve gone home by now, we should come back the next day.  But Uncle Don said that scientists never sleep.”

John stifled a snort.

“He knew what building to go to and everything. There were still some students around.  Uncle Don said we had to wait until they left, so we hid in one of the toilets.”

Miranda gasped. “Tyler, what were you thinking?  Surely by that point you must have realized that this wasn’t a good idea.”

“What was I supposed to do then, Mum? Leave him there?”

“You could have called Angela...”

“It was her off day! You said don’t bother her on her off days!”

“ _Except_ for emergencies!”

“It wasn’t an emergency! Well, maybe it was beginning to be.  But it didn’t start off that way.  It started off with going for a walk, and then we were at the university and then we were in the toilet and... Stuff just kept happening.”  Tyler looked about ready to cry.

“How long were you in the toilet, Tyler?” Lestrade interrupted gently.

“A long time. Uncle Don explained that Dr Fooko was one of the scientists who worked on bonds and didn’t know what he was doing and that he – Uncle Don, I mean – had some stuff he wanted to explain to him, to the doctor.  Then he kind of dozed off for a bit.  I thought maybe when he woke up, he would have changed his mind or maybe just forgot and we could go home.  But he didn’t.  When we came out, there was no one else around.  We took the lift up.  Uncle Don tried a couple of doors and started to get angry when they were locked, but then he found one that was open.  It was a lab, lots of stuff around, but no people.  That seemed to make Uncle Don angrier, he started talking about people hiding and then he started yelling.  I was... I was scared.”  Tyler said this almost defiantly, as if daring anyone to mock his fear.  No one did.

“I thought there might be security guards, so I was trying to get Uncle Don to be quiet and I was trying to get him to _leave._ He picked up a marker and wrote something on the board, the same as what Mr Holmes wrote.  Then he started _smashing_ things.  He went crazy, he was trying to destroy _everything_ and no one came, not even with all the noise.  No one ever came.”  Tyler was crying by now.  Lestrade handed him some tissues.

“Finally Uncle Don started to calm down a bit, or maybe just get tired. I remembered the protesters on the telly, so I took some markers and wrote slogans from their signs on the walls.  I thought maybe the scientists would think that protesters had smashed up the lab.  Then I got Uncle Don out of there.  We got out of the building without anyone seeing us, but Uncle Don...  He was breathing funny.  I wanted to call a taxi, but I didn’t have any money and Uncle Don had come out without his wallet, so we just kept walking.  We were going past an alley, and Uncle Don turned off the street.  He said he had to lie down, that he was dizzy and his chest hurt.  He just sort of _collapsed_.”

There was a moment’s silence as Tyler pulled himself together. Miranda was crying too, quietly.

“I called 999. The lady kept telling me to stay on the phone, that help was coming.  She asked me if I knew how to do compresses, but I didn’t and she said it was more important to stay on the phone anyway.  Uncle Don...  He was panting and grabbing at his chest and sweat was just _pouring_ off his face.  I wanted to do something and I didn’t know what to do and the lady kept telling me that help was coming, she kept _telling_ me that, and then,”  Tyler took a deep breath, “Uncle Don stopped breathing.  It got really, really quiet and I didn’t know why and then I realized it was because I couldn’t hear him panting anymore.  I put my head on his chest and he wasn’t breathing and his heart wasn’t beating and his face was all funny.  And the stupid cow on the phone kept telling me that help was coming.”

“Tyler,” remonstrated Miranda, but faintly.

“I didn’t know what to do. I was sitting there and he was d-d-d-“

“Deceased?” prompted Lestrade.

“He was fuckin’ _dead_!” Tyler snarled.  “And then I heard the sirens coming.  And I thought maybe it was the bloody useless ambulance but maybe it was the police, maybe the university people had called the police, and I wasn’t doing Uncle Don any good sitting there, was I?  There was a bin at the back of the alley, I got over the fence, I got out of there and went home.  I didn’t know what else to do.  I’m sorry, Mum, but I didn’t know what else to do.”

Both Caustlins were crying freely now. When Miranda leaned over and put her arms around her son, he hugged her back, hard.

It reminded John of giving bad news to families, something that experience had never made less painful and awkward for him. He suspected from the stolid look on Lestrade’s face that the inspector felt the same.  Sherlock merely looked intent and impatient.

Finally, the Caustlins pulled apart. “Are we almost done here?” asked Miranda.

“Almost,” answered Sherlock. “Tyler, what happened in the next few days?”

“I stayed home from school the next day. I’d’ve stayed home the rest of the week, except I knew there’d be too many questions.  I went to school, I came home...  Oh, are you asking about Ms Desimone calling?  I... I listened to the messages, like you guessed.  I went over to Uncle Don’s flat on Saturday.  I was kind of scared that the police might be waiting, but there was no one there.  I fixed it to look as if Uncle Don had been eating and sleeping there.”

“Why did you do that, Tyler?” Lestrade asked gently.

Tyler swallowed. “Because I was supposed to go there on Ms Desimone’s off days, like the weekends.  So I knew when Mum heard the phone messages, she’d ask me if I’d gone and if everything looked okay, and then she’d go look herself.  I wanted it to look... right.”

Sherlock raised an eyebrow. “Why not just erase the phone messages?”

“That felt like lying,” said Tyler miserably. Miranda hugged him again.  John took the opportunity to kick Sherlock’s ankle lightly.  Tyler didn’t need a genius puncturing holes in his adolescent logic.

“All right, I think that about wraps things up,” Lestrade began, but Sherlock shook his head.

“One more question. Tyler, why did you need the money so badly?”

Miranda sat up straighter. “What money?”  She looked at her son.  “Tyler?”

The teen was staring at Sherlock. “Are you some kind of mutant?  Like, you can read minds or something?”

“Tyler,” said Miranda more firmly.

Tyler’s gaze dropped to the floor. “Some guys at school were running poker games.  I tried it and I lost some money, so I was trying to win it back, and then, well, I ended up losing a lot more.  I was paying them back a bit at a time, but they were getting impatient and talking about beating me up.”

“Tyler, why didn’t you tell me? Or an adult at school?”

“The school’s got a rule against playing poker, so I’d’ve got in trouble too. I thought if I could just get the money...”

“Who gave you the idea?” asked Sherlock softly.

Tyler gave him a petulant glare. “You said only one more question.”

Sherlock and Lestrade exchanged glances. Lestrade leaned forward.  “Fine, then I’ll ask it.  Who gave you the idea of stealing laboratory supplies and equipment to sell for use in drug manufacture?”

“One of the other kids at school,” replied Tyler sullenly. “He said he heard about it from his older brother.  He said his brother said it was easy money.”

“Only if you know what to steal and to whom to sell it, and only if the buyers know you well enough to trust you. Tyler,” Sherlock waited until the teen was looking at him, “You never want people in the illicit drug trade to know you that well.  Also, you should be aware that payment is often made not in cash but in kind.”

“You mean with drugs.”

“Yes.”

“But I don’t use drugs.” The boy’s voice sounded very small.

“Not yet.”

“Tyler, look at me,” said Miranda. “Were you asking Uncle Don about labs in order to find out more about what to steal?’

“Yuh-ess. Yes.”

She took a deep breath. “When he took you to the university that evening, did you go along with the plan because you thought you’d be able to steal something?”

“I... I thought of that.  It wasn’t the only thing I was thinking of, but that was one of the things.  It was... confusing.  Complicated, like.”

“Carrying out a crime often is,” said Sherlock. “Did you actually steal anything?”

“No. But you won’t believe me, will you?”

“Actually, your testimony agrees with the information I’ve received from the university. They’ve been unable to identify any specific item as missing.  Everything is accounted for by the debris your granduncle left behind in the lab.  Lestrade, you’d have a difficult time proving burglary.”

“Glad to hear it,” Lestrade shot back.

“We can pay for the damaged equipment,” Miranda offered resolutely.

“You can’t afford to,” was Sherlock’s cool reply. “The damages total more than £20,000” – Miranda gasped – “and you’re not that well off.  If you were, you would have hired a caregiver for your uncle seven days a week instead of three.  You took the trip to Spain because you won it in an office pool and you haven’t been able to afford a holiday in years.  That’s why you felt you needed to take advantage of the chance now, despite your misgivings about leaving both Tyler and your uncle on their own.”

“And I was right, wasn’t I?” she asked bitterly. “If I hadn’t gone, none of this would have happened.”

“It’s not your fault, Mum. It’s the ambulance people’s, for not getting there fast enough.  And... it’s mine, too.  If I could’ve figured out better what to do, with the poker or Uncle Don’s meds or going to the university or, really, _anything_.  I...  I fucked up.”  Tyler looked at Lestrade.  “Am I going to gaol?”

“That’s up to the magistrate. In your favour, you’ll be tried as a youth and it’s your first offence.  The charge will likely be criminal damage but not aggravated criminal damage.  It’s possible that the magistrate will accept that you were largely an accessory to the crime rather than an active perpetrator.”

“Show John your hands,” Sherlock ordered Tyler. The youth looked puzzled but complied.  John examined them thoroughly.

“Greg, even six days after the event, lacerations such as those we saw on Donald McKinsey’s hands would leave some traces. Tyler doesn’t have any, and I’m prepared to state that in court as a doctor.”

“What’s that mean?” asked Tyler.

“It means,” said Sherlock, “That you didn’t smash things yourself.”

“Yeah, that’s right! I didn’t!  I just...”  Tyler trailed off.

“Stood by and watched your granduncle smash things.”

Tyler was back to staring at the floor. “Yeah.  Yes, I did that.”  Miranda hugged him again.

“Ms Caustlin, I can release Tyler to you on bail. If you’ll excuse me while I get the forms...”  Lestrade stepped out of the room, and Sherlock followed him.  Through the open doorway, John could see them discussing something in the corridor.  John stood up himself, stretching a bit.

“Doctor?” John turned to see that Miranda had approached at him.  “Thank you for being willing to testify on Tyler’s behalf.  We appreciate it.”

“No, no, that’s... just something doctors do. And, ah, I’m sorry about, well, earlier.”

“You mean when you got me in that hold and kept me from getting away? “ Tyler put in. “Can you teach me to do that?”

“Tyler!” his mother remonstrated.

“Nope. It’s not the kind of thing you should learn until you’re at least old enough to learn it the same place I did.”

“Where was that?” asked Miranda.

“The army. RAMC, to be specific.”

Tyler looked impressed. Miranda looked... interested.

“John,” said Sherlock from the doorway. John wondered how long he’d been standing there. “We’re leaving now.”


	7. Chapter 7

It was almost 5’o’clock when they left the Yard. John was about to suggest that they stop for take-away on their way back to Baker Street, but Sherlock pulled out his mobile and, unusually for him, placed a voice call.

“Dr Foucault? Sherlock Holmes.  Will you be at the university for some while yet?...  Yes, it’s in connection with the case...  Excellent.  Dr Watson and I will be there shortly.”

John stared as Sherlock stepped up to the kerb and hailed a cab. When Sherlock pointedly held the door open for him, he considered walking off in the opposite direction.  His desire to confront Sherlock won out, and he scrambled into the cab after all.

“Hell, Sherlock, can’t you resist just this once?”

“What, exactly, are you suggesting that I resist?”

“The urge to brag. You could have left Lestrade to notify Foucault.”

“It’s almost five.”

“Fine, Lestrade could have called Foucault tomorrow morning! But, no, you’re in too much of a hurry to prove your cleverness once again.  Clever enough to pin a spot of vandalism...”

“More than £20,000 worth of vandalism.”

“...on a dead man who suffered from dementia and a 16-year-old boy trying to deal with a situation he never should have been left with.”

“The 16-year-old boy in question was actively planning to resort to theft in order to settle his gambling debts – debts that he accrued by knowingly violating his school’s regulations.”

“Oh, really, and when you were 16 you’d never broken a rule in your life? Should I call Mycroft to confirm that?”

Sherlock’s mouth flattened into a stubborn line. “Should _I_ ask the driver to pull over?  You needn’t accompany me if you don’t wish to.”

“No, I’m sticking right with you. Someone has to be there to tell the other side of the story.”

“I’ll let you practice your lines, then.” With that, Sherlock turned pointedly to stare out the window.

The ride to the university was short. When they arrived, Sherlock led the way to Dr Foucault’s office.

“Mr Holmes, Dr Watson. Please come in, be seated.”  Foucault was a soft-spoken man, his French accent worn thin after years in the UK.  His office was chock full of books and papers, but very neatly kept.  The only personal touches were a brightly coloured mug and a small, framed photo on his desk.

“Thank you for waiting for us, doctor,” replied Sherlock smoothly. “I’ll get straight to the point.  The university requires all human experimental subjects to sign consent forms, am I correct?”

“You are.”

“Do you know if it would it be possible to get access to all such forms signed in the mid-1970s? Say, from 1973 to 1977?”

“It would possible, yes. But perhaps I can save you the time and trouble, Mr Holmes.  You seek to establish that one particular name is written among those many forms.  Donald McKinsey.”

Foucault sat very straight and spoke very calmly. Only the slight trembling of his hands on the desktop betrayed him.  When he noticed John looking at them, he glanced at them himself, then gave a slight shrug and left them where they were.

“Donald McKinsey was only a few years older than I. Over the course of the research project, we became, to some degree, close.  I am not sure I would say close _friends_ , but close.  I had some admiration for him.  He had married, he was to be a father, he had lost both his wife and child.  Myself, I was still a graduate student, just beginning my career.  He seemed to me to be more...  more completely an adult than I had managed to become.”  Foucault gave a dry chuckle.  “The fancies of young men, eh?”

“Was Mr McKinsey the only experimental subject?” asked Sherlock.

“For this phase of the study, yes. There were to have been others, later on, but...  that did not happen, of course.”

“Of course. Did Mr McKinsey ever speak of his motivations for volunteering for this particular experiment?”

“He wished to move on. It was one of the things I admired about him, that after such a tragedy, he was determined to go on with his life.  He wished for a successful outcome – as we all did!  But he said that even if the experiment failed, he would know he had contributed to the body of scientific knowledge.  I think...”  Here Dr Foucault faltered for the first time.  “I have sometimes thought, over the years, that he understood ‘failure’ only as the absence of the desired effect.”

John frowned. “You mean he thought that the worst that could happen was that nothing would happen?”

Foucault shrugged again, this time with a small, sad smile. “He was a young man too, for all that he seemed older to me.”

“You had run safety trials?” asked Sherlock.

Foucault looked slightly shocked. “Yes, of course!  What do you think?  Then again, in view of what happened, I suppose it is not an unreasonable question.  Yes, we ran trials.  We ran them on samples of skin and of muscle tissue.  We did not... run tests on bone.”

And with that, John knew what had happened. “The catalyst you used to reverse the reaction attacked McKelvey’s wrist bone.”

“Yes, Dr Watson. Everything was going well, we thought.  The colour reversal was already proceeding, although slowly, over the course of several days.  But Donald complained of pain in his wrist.  We did not realize at first.  We thought, the muscle tissue.  But x-rays revealed that the bone was heavily corroded – and that the corrosion was spreading.  It was necessary to amputate the wrist for to save the arm.  Donald was... angry.  Angry and shocked.  We were all shocked.  The research project was discontinued after this.”

“There was some debate among the senior researchers as to whether or not we should publish,” Foucault continued. “Some said no, but Dr Blessington said it was our responsibility, that other researchers should not inadvertently repeat what we had done.  But I think you have already read the resulting paper, Mr Holmes?”

“I have,” replied Sherlock. “And I know that _you_ knew Donald McKinsey was the one who wrote Dobrieuzi’s equation on the whiteboard the moment I pointed out that it had been written by a right-handed person using their left hand.”

“I could not stay once I realized. I am sorry.  Helen – Dr Campbell-Williams – she does not know why I left.”

“Rather impatient, isn’t she?” remarked Sherlock.

Foucault sighed. “By temperament, yes.  And also, she does not understand the complexities of experimenting on living beings, especially living human beings.  You know about the incident in Germany?”

“We do. And so did Donald McKinsey.”

“Nom de dieu!” For the first time in the conversation, Foucault seemed to have heard something he didn’t already know.  “He has been tracking me all these years?”

“I don’t know how long and I don’t know whether Mr McKinsey was following chromochemical research in general or your research in particular. What I _can_ say is that he had been doing so recently and that he obtained some of his information from foreign language sources.”

Foucault looked troubled. “He would be in his late sixties now, Donald.”

“He was, yes.” John could tell from Foucault’s expression that he’d caught Sherlock’s change in verb tense.  “He suffered from heart problems and the early stages of dementia.  He was well enough to have his own flat, with frequent visits from a paid caregiver and almost daily visits from his niece.  The niece went on holiday, leaving her 16-year-old son to look after his granduncle.”

“Mr McKinsey’s medications had been changed recently. The new medications upset his stomach.  Once the niece was gone, he stopped taking them.  At about the same time, the media began focussing on the change in divorce laws and the resulting protests, including the anti-science protests.  His grandnephew reported that he would become agitated while watching these on television.”

“One evening, he persuaded the boy to accompany him to the university. He’d almost certainly read Dr Campbell-Williams’ comments in die Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung predicting an imminent breakthrough.  He knew where you work.  He found an unlocked door...”

“Merde,” muttered Foucault.

“...wrote Dobrieuzi’s equation on the whiteboard and began smashing whatever he could. His grandnephew was unable to stop him.”

“It was the grandnephew who wrote the other slogans, yes? To try and cover, to protect Donald.”

“Yes,” confirmed Sherlock. “Eventually Mr McKinsey tired sufficiently that the grandnephew was able to induce him to leave.  They began to walk home, but they were still quite near the university when Mr McKinsey suffered a heart attack.  His grandnephew called 999, but the paramedics were too late.  He died in an alley, alone except for the boy at his side.”

“Nom de dieu,” Foucault said again, softly. His eyes were bright, as if with unshed tears.  “Then it is over.”

“Not quite,” Sherlock replied. “New Scotland Yard arrested the grandnephew on charges of criminal damage.  The boy was released on bail to his mother just before I called you.  Due to the hour, DI Lestrade put off processing the paperwork until tomorrow morning.  However...”

John found himself holding his breath, sensing that Sherlock had paused for effect.

“He told me privately that the Yard would be willing to drop the charges entirely if the university was willing as well. I have his card here.  The mobile number will reach him this evening.”

“Please,” said Foucault, and stretched out his hand for the card. “I am the last of the research team that did this wrong to Donald McKinsey.  I would be grateful for the opportunity to make even this small amount of recompense.  I will call your DI Lestrade, Mr Holmes.  Thank you.”

“Dr Campbell-Williams will not be happy,” Sherlock commented in an offhand tone.

“No, but she is a relative newcomer to this university, and I am the senior researcher on this project. It is, as you say, my call.”

***

John knew he owed Sherlock an apology. As the doors closed on the lift that would take them back down to the ground floor, he opened his mouth to make it – only to have Sherlock cut him off by remarking offhandedly, “From what I saw, Miranda Caustlin appears to have forgiven you for manhandling her son.”

Surprised, John countered, “I’m not so sure about that. _Tyler_ certainly seems to have forgiven me.  Of course, he also wants me to teach him how to do it himself.”

“You may find this useful, then.” And Sherlock handed John a bit of paper with a phone number scribbled on it, in Sherlock’s own spiky writing.

John was considering the possibility that Sherlock might have pled Tyler’s case with Foucault for the sole purpose of giving John another chance with Tyler’s mother when the lift doors opened. He discarded the idea as being so implausible it bordered on the impossible and stuck the paper in the pocket of his jeans.

“Thank you. Shall we pick up take-away on the way home?  How about Thai?”

Sherlock shrugged.

“Don’t shrug at me like that. The case is over, so you’re eating.  Thai, or would you rather something else?”

Sherlock smirked, gave a second, more exaggerated shrug and then before John could say anything, added, “Thai is fine.”

***

It _all_ should have been fine.  However, despite Sherlock’s assertions to the contrary, John was both reasonably intelligent and reasonably observant.  He knew Sherlock’s methods.  He’d heard the questions Sherlock had asked Tyler Caustlin, he’d seen the look Sherlock had traded with Lestrade and he’d heard the question Lestrade had asked.  He’d drawn his own conclusions – and now he found himself unable to put them out of his mind.

Maybe he ought to start up his blog again. Writing up the details of the case might help him get it out of his system.  Except, no, this particular case couldn’t be posted.  It wouldn’t be fair to Tyler.  Or to _Sherlock_ , who’d gone out of his way to get Tyler a break.  Sherlock’s possible reasons for doing so were another thing John found himself unable to put out of his mind.

“If you’re going to think that loudly, you’d might as well say what you’re thinking,” complained Sherlock, looking up from his microscope and glaring at John. He was well into his regular transition from post-case celebration to stroppy boredom.

John put down the newspaper he’d been trying to hide behind. “What I’m thinking... isn’t really any of my business.”

“And yet you’re thinking it anyway.”

“Yes,” sighed John. “Look, when you signalled Greg to ask Tyler about selling laboratory equipment to manufacture illegal drugs?  I really don’t see how you had enough information to deduce that.  I have to wonder if you were making a guess – no, don’t interrupt! – based on personal experience, specifically from a period in your life that Greg knows about.”

Sherlock stared a moment, then quirked a humourless smile. “Very good, John.  Yes.  Working in and selling supplies to illegal drug labs was, for some years, my favourite means of support.  I had no objection to being paid in kind, and the work was far more lucrative that picking pockets or other sorts of petty theft, although I did resort to those as well on occasion.”

John, who’d always sort of assumed that Sherlock had supported himself on the streets by doing sex-work, felt his face heating. Trying to cover his embarrassment, he blurted, “That’s why you’re so good at picking pockets.  Not to mention locks, you’re good at those too.”

“Please, I learned both of those skills as a child. I used to practice the former on Mycroft and the latter on Mycroft’s possessions.  As for your obvious assumption, you’ve met Shezza.  Would you pay him to perform fellatio on you?”

Shezza? God, no!  He’d be all too likely to forget what he was doing in a drug-induced haze and bite down.  And yet...  John found himself imagining Sherlock on his knees, dressed in Shezza’s ragged layers, looking up through his lashes with clear, knowing eyes.  Not Shezza, but Sherlock Holmes playing the _role_ of Shezza, _pretending_ John was a stranger, reaching for John’s belt...

And oh, hell, Sherlock was watching him, deducing his thoughts.  Reading his mind, or as near as made no difference.  It was time for a change of topic, and John seized fiercely onto the first one that came to mind.

“Why drug labs, Sherlock?” he challenged. “You obviously had the skills to get a _legitimate_ job.”

Sherlock’s eyes narrowed. “Skills don’t get jobs, John – credentials do.  I’d been expelled from university with nothing to show for my years there except a cocaine addiction.  If Mycroft had been able to lay hands on me, he would have had me locked up.  I didn’t _need_ a ‘legitimate’ job.”  Sherlock was on his feet now and practically spitting the words out.  “I needed anonymity, cocaine and, to some minimal degree, food and shelter.”

He sounded bitter, angry – and young. The Sherlock of the present-day transmuted before John’s eyes into a young man whose world had collapsed around him.

John’s belligerence collapsed as well. “How old were you?” he asked gently.

“Twenty, if it matters,” Sherlock sneered.

“You always matter, Sherlock. You matter to your friends and yes, you _do_ have them.”

“I have you,” Sherlock conceded.

“And others.”

“ _Now_.  But not then.  I’d had... my dealer.  But he was dead, as a result of my own actions.”

“First off, I wouldn’t call your dealer a ‘friend.’ If you killed him, the world’s probably better off for it.”

“I didn’t say I killed him,” retorted Sherlock, petulant now. “I said he died as a result of my actions.  Mycroft persuaded his family to drop the charges by demonstrating that they wouldn’t be able to prove even involuntary manslaughter. _R v Kennedy_.”

“His family – the dealer was another student?”

Sherlock stepped up close to John then and looked down his patrician nose, emphasizing their height difference in a way he rarely did. He aimed his words as carefully as John would aim a gun.  “My dealer was my soulmate.  Everything I wanted.”

When John didn’t answer immediately, Sherlock stalked past him into the living room and picked up his violin. There were no pleasant melodies this evening.  After making a few attempts to be heard over the squawking, squealing discord, John retreated upstairs to his own room, where he first failed to concentrate on a book and then, for a long time, failed to sleep.


	8. Chapter 8

The next morning, John made two cups of tea, Sherlock drank one and life went on. Life brought other cases, other crime scenes.  Eventually it brought the crime scene at which Sherlock pronounced the apparent break-in and murder to be nothing more than a household accident, boring and a complete waste of his time.  The deceased’s grieving widower took exception to Sherlock’s remarks and attempted to retaliate first verbally and then physically.  Fortunately, John was able to immobilize him and hand him off to Lestrade, who in turn led him off to one side to calm down a bit.

Sherlock was still standing there smirking.

“Look at him,” muttered Donovan, loud enough that she obviously meant John to hear. “Black band on his wrist, but he’s got no idea what that other bloke’s feeling.  You know, most of the Yard thinks he turned his own band black as some kind of experiment.  That he w _anted_ a black band so people would leave him alone and he wouldn’t have to worry about...  What’s he call it?”

“Transport,” replied John, discomfited. In light of Sherlock’s recent revelations, Donovan’s remarks were a bit too close to the bone.  Why was he listening to them, anyway?  He should shake Donovan off and get Sherlock out of there.  But she was still talking.

“That’s it. The Yarders figure that’s a lot more likely than Sherlock actually finding a soulmate.  But _me_ , I think he did.”

“Find a soulmate?”

“Yeah. I think he found them – and I think he killed them.  Because that’s what psychopaths _do_.”

John was never quite sure exactly what happened next. By the time the roaring in his ears died down, he was face to face with Donovan, she’d dropped into a defensive stance and both Lestrade _and_ the widower had grabbed him by the arms.

Sherlock was standing exactly where he had been, but the smirk was gone. “John,” he said, “I think I should call a cab.”

John muttered an apology to Donovan and fled the scene with Sherlock.

“It’s nothing I haven’t heard before,” Sherlock commented as he sat on the sofa and sipped his tea back at 221B.

“That doesn’t mean you should have to hear it again. You said yourself that you didn't, well, kill him.”

“I don’t think that the truth would do much to appease Detective Sergeant Donovan. I was attempting to synthesize a more effective form of benzoylmethylecgonine.”

“Ecgonine, that’s... You were trying to create stronger cocaine?”

“Not merely _stronger_ ,” Sherlock protested, “More _effective_ , with stronger desired effects and weaker undesired ones.”  And then he rather primly, “It was a birthday present.”

John stared. “For the dealer.”

“For _my_ dealer.  Or perhaps supplier would be a better word.  He didn’t have any other customers, and I never paid him.”

“So, what, he was giving you cocaine for free because he liked you?”

“Because he liked sex, and cocaine made sex tolerable for me. Although to be honest, we both enjoyed cocaine for its own sake.”  Sherlock sounded as if he were talking about a pint down at the pub.

“And this wanker was your soulmate.” The moment John said the words he knew they had been mistake, even as he watched Sherlock’s face start to slip behind its mask.  “Sorry.  I’m sorry, that was uncalled for.  It’s just... I’m having trouble understanding how the whole soulmate thing happened.”

“I was walking across campus one evening and noticed a sharp pain in my ankle. When I looked down, there was a miniature bull terrier attached to it.  I was still trying to pry the dog loose when its owner appeared, offering more apologies than assistance.  I pointed out the obvious: that he was an only child, that his parents’ wealth was self-made in manufacturing, that he was the first member of his family to attend university, that he was only there because if he’d refused to go, they would have thrown him out of their home, that although moderately intelligent he was failing all his courses because he didn’t give a damn and that it didn’t matter anyway because his future career in his parents’ company had already been laid out for him.  Also that it he continued to snort cocaine in his usual amounts, his nasal septum would eventually perforate and that he’d be better off injecting the drug.”

“And he told you to piss off?” John suggested, smiling.

“He told me I was amazing.”

John froze.

“He walked me to the student clinic. They wanted to send me to a hospital.  I didn’t want to go.  The dog-owner – Victor – talked them into giving him some bandages and antibiotics.  He took me back to his room.  Within a week he’d introduced me to cocaine and sex, and our wristbands had turned gold.  Our families were mutually horrified.”  Sherlock smiled with the memory, then finally seemed to notice that John was not smiling.  “Problem?”

“Christ, Sherlock, the man let his dog attack you, helped you evade proper medical care, introduced you to an addictive drug and persisted in having sex with you because he enjoyed it even though you didn’t. But apparently none of that mattered because he told you that you were ‘amazing.’”

“ _You_ told me I was amazing.”

“That’s...” part of the problem, John thought. “That’s irrelevant.  I wasn’t simultaneously causing you harm!”

“Neither was Victor. The attack wasn’t his idea – the dog was young and not yet properly trained.  Avoiding the hospital was _my_ idea.  The sex was consensual and the cocaine was, as I mentioned previously, enjoyable for us both. _I_ was the one who showed _him_ how to dissolve and inject it.”

“Right, because god forbid you should be a junkie with a perforated septum,” John snapped.

“We weren’t junkies, we were university students who used cocaine. Our families eventually agreed to let us marry after – and only if – we both graduated.  Victor’s grades improved considerably after that.”

“After you started doing his work for him, you mean.”

“Not as much of it as you may think. He _was_ moderately intelligent.  He’d been lacking... motivation.”

John’s mind supplied an altogether superfluous and horrific image of how Sherlock might have ‘motivated’ this Victor fellow.

“I’d been lacking someone to stand with me against the world.”

John blinked. He suddenly felt like a bit of an ass.  “What do you mean?”

“You’ve met Sebastian Wilkes?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” said John with a grimace.

“Public school had been full of people like Sebastian. Despite Mycroft’s warnings, I imagined university as being different, a place where students actually came to _learn_.  I was wrong.  It was just same, except with even more opportunities for me to demonstrate my freakishness.”

“Sherlock, you’re not a freak.”

Sherlock studied him a moment. “So you’ve said.  Victor said that I was _his_ freak.  He said I was amazing and brilliant. He said it especially when my deductions drove other students to rage – or tears.  We’d go ‘round campus and find targets for me to deduce.  Then we’d go back to his room or mine, shoot up and have sex.  He wasn’t like you, John.”

“Glad to hear it.” John sounded grumpy and knew it.

“I mean that you tell me I’m amazing because you’re dazzled by my deductive brilliance.”

“And your modesty as well.”

“Victor told me the same thing, but he meant I was an amazing weapon. He never asked _how_ I made my deductions.  He didn’t care as long as I could destroy whatever target he aimed me at.  He loved me for that.  I... loved him, if that’s the applicable term, because he was on my side.  It was no fluke that our bands turned gold for each other.  Each of us was what the other wanted.”

“That makes an awful kind of sense,” John admitted.

“I can’t change what was true. I’d might as well tell you the end.”

“Yeah, you should. Otherwise I’ll just imagine something worse.”

“With your horribly romantic imagination.” Sherlock was teasing now, and John felt a bit better for it.  They’d be all right.

“We were both in our final year. Victor’s birthday fell 34 days before mine.  I’d been researching the synthesis for some time, but it took me longer than I’d planned to complete it.  Part of the problem, of course, was that my work was completely unauthorized, so that I could only use the university labs when no one else was around.”

“I knew that the results would have to be tested. Since I was working undercover, as it were, my access to subjects was limited to two laboratory rats borrowed from the university’s cages.  I chose two with easily identifiable markings so that I could release them back into the cages for the day and then retrieve them again.”

“By the morning of Victor’s birthday, I had the results I needed. I cleaned up the lab, returned the rats and then took my supply of the modified drug back to my room, where I attached a note to Victor suggesting that we try it together that evening.  I took the package to his room, but he’d already left for classes.  I slipped it under his pillow and went on to my own classes.”

“It wasn’t until that afternoon that one of the other students told me that the chief lab manager was looking for me. When I arrived, she presented me with two dead rats.  She’d discovered them in the midst of violent convulsions.  Since so far as she knew no one else was using them for research purposes – and since I had something of a reputation – she demanded to know if I knew anything about what might have happened.” 

“Delayed effects.”

“Indeed. Her questions and demands were interminable.  When I could finally get away, I ran to Victor’s room.  He...”  And here Sherlock stopped, with a look on his face such as John had never seen.

“Sherlock, you don’t have to tell me the rest.”

“Yes, I do.” Sherlock’s voice was so soft that it was almost a baritone whisper.  He didn’t move away, neither when John sat down next to him on the sofa nor when, after a moment’s hesitation, John slipped an arm around his shoulders.

“Victor was always greedy. As I’d half-expected, he didn’t wait for me.  He’d gone ahead and tried out his birthday present.  He was... still alive when I got there.  I called 999.  They were too late.”

“Jesus, Sherlock.”

“You’ve heard the rest. Victor’s family wanted me arrested for murder.  The university just wanted me _gone_.  Mycroft dealt with Victor’s family and sent a car to take me back to our family’s home.  He didn’t attend to the matter himself, though.  I was able to slip away while his henchmen were packing up my room.”

“Jesus,” said John again. He tightened his grip.

They sat there in silence awhile. Finally Sherlock indicated the skull on the mantel piece.  “That’s Victor’s.”

John let go of Sherlock and sat bolt upright.

“Not in the anatomical sense. I believe it was originally a theatre prop.”

John relaxed slightly. “Did Victor go in for acting, then?”

Sherlock sniffed. “Victor had delusions of drama.”

“Well, they say that opposites attract,” said John lightly.

“He’d left the skull in my room, so the henchmen thought it was mine and packed it. I found it years later when Mycroft had the boxes sent to me at Montague Street.  Why do you care?”

The abrupt question startled John. “Sorry?”

“None of this has any impact on you. It all happened years ago.  And yet you care about it.  You ask questions, you listen to the answers.”

“You ask questions yourself when you’re on a case.”

Sherlock shrugged. “Cases are interesting.  Some of them, anyway.”

“ _You’re_ interesting, at least to me.  On the scale you use for cases, you, Sherlock Holmes...”  John paused for effect, to be sure he had Sherlock’s full attention.  “...are an eleven.”

Sherlock stared. Then he smiled, a young and open smile.  “Amazing,” he said.

And John leaned forward and kissed him.

It wasn’t a pre-meditated kiss. It was just that Sherlock was right there and smiling at something John had said and that his lips looked softer than Miranda Caustlin’s and that John wondered what they’d feel like against his own.  So he kissed Sherlock and then he kissed him again and then Sherlock started to kiss John back, which was brilliant.

And then Sherlock’s mobile rang. Sherlock, who could ignore his mobile for hours on end, leapt up from the sofa, grabbed his mobile and, talking, went into his bedroom and shut the door behind him.

Right, Watson, John berated himself. Really smooth.  Your best friend tells you how he lost his soulmate, so you decide that’s a good time to kiss him.

Sherlock was obviously right. John was an idiot.

Sherlock exited his bedroom, carrying his overnight bag. “Case.  Lancashire.  I’ll be gone three days, perhaps four.”

“I’m working tomorrow and the rest of the week,” said John.

He was about to add that he _might_ be able to call around to see if other doctors would cover his shifts when Sherlock bit off, “Fine,” and left in a swirl of coat.

Which made sense. Sherlock Holmes of all people had no use for idiots.

***

On the first day, there were no texts.

On the second and third days, ditto.

At a quarter of five in the morning the fourth day after Sherlock’s departure for Lancashire, John shook himself awake from a fitful doze that was about to take a left turn into a nightmare. He was contemplating the question of whether or not it was worthwhile trying to get any more sleep that night when a dark shape by the bedroom door moved slightly.  Staring at the shape caused it to resolve into Sherlock, sitting cross-legged on the floor.   

“Hell, Sherlock! What are you doing there?”

“I considered sitting on the bed itself, but the risk of startling an ex-soldier awake while I was within arms’ length seemed like a bad idea.”

“No, I mean – you were in Lancashire.”

“Boring. The body in the canal wasn’t the one the police were looking for, which in turn wasn’t the one they _should_ have been looking for.  You like sex.”

“Not with bodies in canals.”

“We’re past that, John, try to keep up.”

“Well, most people, er, _many_ people do.  Have you been stewing over this the entire time you’ve been gone?”  Not that John could blame him, as John had been doing so himself.

“No. You also don’t like it when I use cocaine.”

“Generally speaking, no. But there’s an additional factor that you may not have considered.”  Even in the dark, John could tell that Sherlock had sat up a little straighter at that, affronted.  “Having sex with someone who’s merely ‘tolerating’ what we do together, even if they’re not taking drugs to do so – that’s just not on for me, Sherlock.  Part of what I enjoy is getting the other person to enjoy themselves.” 

Silence from the darkness. Then, in a surprisingly tentative voice: “I enjoyed the kissing.”

John let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “Kissing is a good place to start.”

“I didn’t enjoy it with Victor, but I did with you. Unless that was a fluke?”

“You kissed Janine, remember?” _John_ certainly remembered.

“For a case and therefore irrelevant,” said Sherlock dismissively. “You should kiss me again.  We need the data.”

John chuckled. “I’m sure we do, but have you ever heard of ‘morning mouth’?”

Something flew out of the darkness. He caught it on pure reflex, then looked at it.  A travel-sized bottle of mouthwash.

“Someone’s been planning,” John commented. He took a mouthful, swirled it around few times, then realized he had no place to spit it out.  He swallowed instead – and then started to cough when it occurred to him that the issue of spitting vs swallowing might well arise again in the not-so-distant future.

“I’ve performed fellatio before.” Sherlock’s voice was closer now.  John looked up in time to see him settle onto the bed towards the foot.  He was fully dressed except for his shoes.

“Enjoyed or tolerated?”

“Tolerated.”

“Then we’ll stick to kissing for now. Can you move up a bit?”

Sherlock moved up. John leant forward.  He had no trouble seeing Sherlock now in the dim street light that filtered through the curtains.  “Hi there, handsome.”

Their lips met softly at first, like ripe fruit that had to be protected from bruising. The kiss was gentle and sweet and threatened to dissolve entirely into laughter when they both tried to introduce tongue at the same time, resulting in a meeting of the tips.  But then John got a firmer grip on Sherlock’s shirt and tried again.  This time their tongues slid against each other in a slippery, sensuous tangle that begged for further exploration.

By the time they broke for air, Sherlock was more or less sitting in John’s lap. He nuzzled John’s neck – and then the nuzzling turned into something that felt more like a yawn against John’s skin.

“You didn’t sleep at all while you were away, did you?” John asked fondly.

“I should go,” said Sherlock, but he made no move to do so.

“Here, I’ll budge over. There’s room...  There you go, that’s it.”

Sherlock was warm and surprisingly comfortable to hold for someone composed so completely of planes and angles. John, who had had sex with men before but had never cuddled one, reflected that they both had things to learn.

“Fluke?” he murmured into Sherlock’s ear.

“Def’nitely not,” Sherlock muttered, already half asleep.

When John woke up again, there was daylight outside and Sherlock was still in his bed, deep in a post-case coma. John tucked him in and went to make tea.


	9. Chapter 9

It was a clear and promising morning a few weeks later when John awoke – alone, for Sherlock had returned to his usual, horrible sleeping habits. If John woke alone, however, he had not gone to bed that way.  He got to his feet and stretched in the early light coming through the window, feeling satisfied.  Pleased. _Pleasured_.  Further experimentation had revealed that Sherlock enjoyed (rather than tolerated) hand jobs and frottage as well as kissing.  Any good scientist will take care to confirm that their experimental results are repeatable.  John felt that he and Sherlock had proven themselves to be very good scientists indeed. 

However, this put them at the limit of John’s previous experience with men. They’d discussed blow jobs, but disagreed as to the best way to proceed.  John was adamant that Sherlock should be the first recipient so that they could establish whether or not he enjoyed the experience.  Sherlock was obviously aware that admitting he _hadn’t_ enjoyed the trial run would cause John to refuse to allow Sherlock to reciprocate.  Ever.  He had adopted the stance that since John was a novice, his learning experience should start with a demonstration provided by, of course, Sherlock. 

John maintained that he was perfectly capable of following verbal instructions and pointed out that Sherlock certainly had no problems telling him what to do in _other_ situations.  He also asserted that the so-called learning experience would certainly fail to achieve its stated goal, as having Sherlock’s mouth on his cock would be highly detrimental to his ability to observe, learn or really perform any higher brain functions whatsoever.  Discussion generally dissolved at this point as John proceeded to demonstrate – on Sherlock – just how detrimental even lesser attentions could be.

Despite their failure to reach an agreement to-date, both parties admitted to having sufficient motivation to continue discussing the matter.

Privately, John found that the longer the negotiations continued, the more desire eroded any resistance he might have to idea of putting another man’s cock in his mouth. He’d already tasted Sherlock’s mouth, his neck, almost every inch of that long, lean body, and each taste left him wanting more.  He’d even tasted Sherlock’s semen after a particularly successful hand job.  John hadn’t thought about what he was doing at the time.  Surrounded by the heady scent of their shared arousal, it had seemed completely natural to touch his tongue to the tip of his finger.  Only when Sherlock hoarsely murmured his name did John look up, so that the bitter-salt taste in his mouth would be forever associated with the heat in those verdigris eyes and the answering heat in his own groin.

Smiling to himself, John pulled on a clear pair of jeans. Padding shirtless down the stairs, he noticed that there was something in one of the pockets.  It turned out to be a crumpled and very clean bit of paper that had survived both the washing machine and the dryer.  On his way to the kitchen, he pitched it at Sherlock, lying recumbent on the sofa in pyjamas and dressing gown.  It landed on the detective’s chest.

Sherlock glanced down at the paper. “Miranda Caustlin’s telephone number.  I’ve only ever seen you date women, and you seemed interested.”

“Is that why you talked Foucault into having the charges against Tyler dropped?”

“His mother wasn’t the only reason.”

“But she was one of them,” said John as he handed Sherlock a mug of tea.

Sherlock shrugged and sipped, his eyes on John.

John took a sip from his own mug. “Does taking me to a club and buying me a drink constitute a date?”

“That was for a case.”

John took another sip and then set his mug down. “Does taking me to lunch at a hidden, secret café constitute a date?”

“That was _during_ a case.”

John moved to the sofa and sat down, straddling Sherlock’s hips as he got hold of the other man’s mug and set it on the coffee table. The sofa wasn’t _quite_ wide enough for this maneuver, but it was worth the awkwardness to watch Sherlock’s pupils bloom open.

“So in your opinion, Mr Consulting Detective, what exactly constitutes a date?”                  

Sherlock smiled slowly. “I’ve been told that it’s where two people who like each other go out and have fun.”

“But was your source reliable?”

“Mmmm, he may bear further evaluation,” said Sherlock. He propped himself up on one arm, carding the fingers of his other hand through John’s hair.

John, perfectly happy to lend himself to further evaluation, leaned forward for a kiss.

“Yoo-hoo! Boys?  You’ve got a visitor.  Are you dec – oh, dear.”  Mrs Hudson, already opening the door, turned to address someone standing behind her on the landing.  “Perhaps you should wait out here a moment, dear.”  A feminine voice murmured a response they couldn’t make out.

“Damn,” muttered John, “She’s standing between me and my bedroom.”

“You can borrow one of my t-shirts,” replied Sherlock, heading for his own room.

The shirt provided was short enough that it would have surely left a strip of bare skin above Sherlock’s trousers. On John, it fit nicely in terms of length but was uncomfortably tight across the shoulders and chest.  After a cursory glance around the living room and kitchen to see if he could spot one of his jumpers, he resigned himself to the situation and opened the door to admit...  Dr Campbell-Williams.

And Sherlock was still in the loo, fussing with his hair.

“Please come in. Sherlock will be joining us shortly,” said John, smiling at the physicist.  She appeared to be contemplating a spot a few inches below his suprasternal notch.  “Would you like some tea?”

“No... Yes, actually.  Black, no sugar.”  Without further invitation, she seated herself on the sofa.  She was dressed much as she had been the day that they visited the lab, except without a lab coat over her sensible blouse and trousers.  Also, she seemed to be wearing more make-up.

Sherlock arrived just as John was pouring the tea.

“Dr Campbell-Williams.”

“Mr Holmes. Don’t bother to return to reprints you removed from the lab after you got me out of the room.  I’ve already obtained copies – and re-read them.  I take it that our vandal was that poor bastard who had his hand amputated after that muck-up of Blessington’s four decades ago?  Robert’s still feeling guilty over that.  God knows why, as he was only a graduate student at the time and it wasn’t his decision.  Still, I’m not surprised that he had the university drop the charges.”

John, on the verge of opening his mouth with the admonishment, “Bit not good,” realized just in time that he wasn’t addressing Sherlock and kept quiet.

Sherlock himself merely shrugged. “Annoying, but it happens.  I’m far more interested in the communication you received from your ex-husband last evening.”

Campbell-Williams looked startled, then chuckled. “Right, I should have expected that.  How?”

“You were too agitated to sleep last night. You’ve attempted to cover this up – poorly – with make-up.  Your state of agitation is further betrayed by the fact that you’ve buttoned your blouse crookedly.  You were already headed for work this morning when it occurred to you that Baker Street was more or less on your way, hence your early arrival without a previous call.  If the source of your agitation were work-related, you would have continued on to the lab and dealt with it.  Therefore, personal.  But both your parents are deceased and you have no siblings, children or current attachments.  Therefore, your ex-husband.  Not a letter, I think.  Something more immediate.”

“Phone call, actually. From his hotel.”

“He’s in London.”

“Yes.  Wants to meet me for dinner.  Talk about old times, he says.  The last time we spoke was that tiff almost two years ago, and now this.  Something’s up, I just don’t know _what_.”

“Describe the nature of said ‘tiff.’”

“He wanted to refinance the mortgage on the house. It’s still in both our names, so he needed my consent.”

“Which you refused to give.”

“Of course I did! That mortgage is almost paid off.  Why would I want to be dragged into _more_ debt?  And it’s not as if he really needs the money.”

“I was under the impression that none of his recent books had been successful.”

Campbell-Williams snorted. “Too right.  But he teaches creative writing classes and workshops.  Hates doing it, but he’s charming and popular, so he makes a reasonably steady income off it.  I suspect he spends more than he can afford showing off his girlfriend at fundraisers and galas.”

“The grounds for your suspicions?”

“He used to...” and here Campbell-Williams seemed hesitant for the first time. “He used to do the same with me, when we first met.  He said that meeting people would help my career.  He wouldn’t listen when I tried to tell him that scientific career-building doesn’t work quite that way.  And anyway, I rather liked it.”

“Being shown off.”

“No. Seeing him in his element.”  Her voice took on an unexpectedly wistful note.  “Seeing him shine.”

“You married Mr Wentworth shortly after the publication of his first novel, a highly fictionalized account of his voyage around the world on a series of tramp steamers.”

Campbell-Williams looked surprised. “You’ve read it?”

Sherlock shuddered visibly. “No.  I think that John may have.”  He appeared not to notice John’s glare.

“Then how...   Oh, of course.  You researched him as part of the vandalism case.”

“You were receiving threats, you have a former spouse. The possible connection couldn’t be ruled out.”

Campbell-Williams snorted again. “Not unless you’d ever met David.  He’s not the threatening type.  But to answer your question, yes.  He’d just published his one and only best-seller, although of course we didn’t know that then.  There was talk of movie rights.  He was... confident.  And charming.  One of the few men I’d met who wasn’t intimidated by my intelligence.  I’m sure you’re familiar with the problem yourself, Mr Holmes?”

She looked pointedly at John, who felt his face heating. Sherlock merely shrugged.

“Well, it’s worse for a woman. David was unintimidated, appreciative, even supportive.  It made for... a nice change.”

“His subsequent books did not meet with success.”

“His subsequent books were complete flops. It was as if he’d written the one story he had in him.  Meanwhile, my own career was getting on nicely for reasons that had everything to do with my own hard work and nothing to do with him.  He became rather less supportive of me, and I, well, I wasn’t very good at being supportive of him.  I did _try_.  Not my thing, I suppose, although it would have helped if he’d been more open about telling me what he needed.”

“You returned to the UK five years ago.”

“Robert and I were already collaborating. Coming back made that easier.  It was quite obvious that the situation with David was never going to improve.  Once I was gone, he found another woman whose career he could help, perhaps more effectively than he’d ever helped mine.”

“Except that he no longer has the financial resources he had at the time he met you.”

Campbell-Williams frowned. “You think that he’s come all this way to London to ask for money and have me tell him ‘no’ in person?”

“Not specifically. It would be a mistake to theorize in advance of the facts.  Did he tell you the name of his hotel?”

“Name and room number both. Have you got a bit of paper?”

Sherlock leaned forward and picked up the crumpled scrap lying on the floor. “This will do.  It’s clean.”

Campbell-Williams gave John a puzzled look as he choked back a laugh, but extracted a pen from her pocket and scribbled the required information.

“One more question, Dr Campbell-Williams. You described your ex-husband as ‘not the threatening type,’ yet his phone call unnerved you sufficiently to seek my assistance.”

“His voice was... off. Shaky, as if he were extremely nervous, perhaps even scared.”

“More nervous than he’d be about calling to ask for money?”

“David wouldn’t be nervous about that,” she said drily.

“Thank you. I’ll be in touch this evening.” 

***

John arrived home from the clinic that evening to find Sherlock all but dancing a jig. He’d infiltrated Wentworth’s hotel room dressed as a member of the housekeeping staff, only to have to hide in a closet when Wentworth returned unexpectedly.  Fortunately, Wentworth received a phone call and went out shortly afterwards.  Sherlock had thrown a shabby jacket over his staff uniform and a knitted cap over his curls, then tailed Wentworth to Regent’s Park.

“Where Wentworth had quite the tête-à-tête with Jack Curran,” Sherlock finished.

“Jack Curran would be...”

“Small-time crook. Usually works with Bill Ives, who has an equally crooked brother-in-law named George Banks who lives in the States.  Specifically, in Massachusetts.”

“So Banks sent Wentworth to London to meet with Curran and Ives and do... what? Act as bait to draw Campbell-Williams in?

“Banks is primarily a loan shark. It’s almost certain that Wentworth owes him money.  Curran and Ives, on the other hand, are middlemen.  Get in, get the job done, get out, get paid.  They’ve done a bit of everything, but murder’s not their usual style.  Kidnapping would be, or extortion.”

“Someone pays Curran and Ives. Banks gets a share, and Wentworth’s debts get written off, at least partially.”

“A good summary of my current hypothesis. On my advice, Campbell-Williams is meeting Wentworth for dinner tomorrow evening.”

“Wait a moment, are you sure that’s safe?”

“Of course it is. You and I will be there.”

“Sherlock...”

“As will Lestrade and his team. Curran’s involvement was sufficient to pique their interest.”

“I’ll leave the gun home then, shall I?”

“Probably wise.”


	10. Chapter 10

Campbell-Williams wore a simple black dress with her hair in a messy knot instead of its usual messy ponytail. She also wore a wire, although this was not visible to the casual observer.  She looked remarkably poised for a civilian – far more poised than her dinner companion.  Wentworth was a handsome middle-aged man whose fine dark suit advertised his broad shoulders but didn’t do much for the visible sheen of sweat on his face. 

Neither of them appeared to pay much attention to their waiter, who was in any case professionally unobtrusive.

(“Men never pay attention to waiters when they’re nervous. _You_ should know that, John,” Sherlock had commented.

“Sherlock? Piss off.”)

Equally, neither Campbell-Williams nor Wentworth appeared to notice the short blond man who sat alone at a nearby table, nursing a glass of house red and occasionally glaring at his mobile as he waited for a dinner companion who was running late.

The couple had finished their salad course and were sipping wine and chatting as they waited for the waiter to remove their plates. Campbell-Williams had just set her glass down when Wentworth indicated something behind her, apparently on the far side of the restaurant.  When she turned to look, he leaned forward and dropped some sort of powder into her glass.

The solitary blond glared at his mobile and clicked a button several times. As Campbell-Williams turned back to face Wentworth, there was a moment when she and the blond man appeared to look directly at each other.  He scratched his nose, she continued to turn and the moment was over.

The waiter arrived with their entrées. As he was exchanging one set of plates for another, Campbell-Williams took another sip of wine.  It must have gone down the wrong way, however, for she immediately lifted her napkin to her lips with her free hand and began coughing.  She was still coughing as she tried to set her glass down, which was almost certainly why she clumsily knocked it over onto her bread and butter plate.  Wentworth jumped, but the waiter took it in stride.  Brushing off the couple’s apologies, he removed both the plate and the glass and vanished, presumably to obtain fresh ones.

The blond man gave up on waiting for his missing companion, threw some money on the table to cover the cost of his wine and left. He turned right on leaving the restaurant, then ducked down an alleyway.

The alleyway turned out to be surprisingly well-occupied.

“I’ve got photos of him doping her wine, and Sherlock’s got samples of the doped wine itself. Anything on the wire?”

“Nothing interesting,” said the technician with the headphones. “She’s lamenting that it was a waste to spill such nice wine.  He’s being a gentleman.  He’s offering her his own glass, seeing as how the waiter hasn’t come back yet.”

John grinned. “They might be there a while.”

“So might we,” Lestrade cautioned. “She’s got to wait long enough that it seems realistic that the drug is taking effect.”

“They’re eating... the food is fine...” continued the tech.

“I’m definitely getting myself something nice for dinner when we get out of here,” Donovan commented. “This is making me hungry.”

“They’re still eating... Oh!  Here we go.  She says she’s feeling dizzy.  He sounds alarmed.  She’s standing up...  Chair fell over...”

“We’re going to be seeing action in a few minutes,” muttered Donovan. “Where’s the Freak?”

The restaurant’s delivery door opened. An elderly man, well-dressed but obviously not sober, staggered out into the alley.  John and the Yarders followed him discreetly as he moved up towards the mouth of the alley.

“Restaurant door opening...” said the tech behind them.

Wentworth appeared on the pavement supporting Campbell-Williams, who seemed to be on the verge of passing out. When a black cab pulled up to the curb, he more or less dragged her towards it.  The drunken, elderly man pried himself off the wall he was leaning on.

The tech spoke up urgently. “Wait, wait!  They’re talking...”

Wentworth was indeed exchanging words with someone in the cab.

“Don’t want her hurt... Won’t be...  Keep her nice and safe...  Our cut...  Georgie’s cut...  Your slate wiped,” recited the tech.

“That’s it, that’s all we need,” Lestrade muttered. “Sherlock, go!”

This was the part of the plan John liked least.

The elderly man staggered out onto the pavement, spotted the cab and made for it with surprising speed, calling, “Taxi! Taxi!” even as he bore down on it.

“This one’s taken!” yelled Wentworth as he tried to manhandle Campbell-Williams into the back seat. A thick-set man started to get out of the front passenger seat to assist him.

Several things happened at once. Campbell-Williams suddenly woke up, got a firm grip on her ex-husband’s arm and half jumped, half fell backwards away from the cab.  The elderly man grew half a head taller and slammed his fist into the thick-set man’s gut.  The cabbie opened _his_ door, stood up and produced a gun, only to have John twist his wrist sharply and remove the gun from him as the Yarders surrounded the cab.

“Bill Ives,” said Lestrade cheerfully. “I’d never heard that you’d got a cabbie’s license.”

“Piss off,” said Ives sourly. And then to the husky young constable with the handcuffs, “I said piss off!  You can’t cuff me, my wrist’s broken!”

“Sprained,” said John. “I’m a doctor.  My medical advice is to cuff him.”

Curran, sullenly silent, had already been cuffed, but Wentworth was considerably less sanguine than the experienced criminals.

“David, stop _mewling_ and let the officer put handcuffs on you!” raged Campbell-Williams.

“Want to do it yourself?” Donovan offered.

Campbell-Williams was delighted by the opportunity.

“She might be your type after all, John,” murmured Sherlock. “She’s almost dangerous enough.”

“Why settle for ‘almost’ when I’ve already got the real thing?” John murmured back. He was rewarded by Sherlock’s smile.     

***

Once again proving that there is no honour among either thieves or kidnappers, Curran and Ives were quite ready to rat out their employer, an extremist pro-bond group called the Soldiers of Fate.

“We were only gonna get paid if we delivered the boffin bird. They read about her in some foreign newspaper, thought she’d make a good hostage.  But we’re not gonna be making that delivery now, so we’re not getting paid.  We’d might as well talk,” Ives explained.

“You’re not worried about them coming after you?”

“Nah, they’re amateurs. Mad as mudlarks, but amateurs.”

A search of the Soldiers’ headquarters and bank accounts revealed a newly-constructed cell in the basement and several unusual financial transactions. Members of the group who hadn’t been in on the kidnapping plan professed themselves to be shocked and were eager to prove their innocence by providing further information.

David Wentworth’s mewling increased after a phone call to the US Embassy failed to provide a sympathetic response.

***

“Well, I’ve certainly learned to be careful what I say when the media’s around,” Campbell-Williams told John and Sherlock over tea at 221B. She’d come by that evening with a nice cheque.  “Not to mention being careful about whom I get into relationships with, _if_ I ever care to try that again.  I still can’t quite believe I married such a, a... milksop!  And with David in gaol, I have to pay someone to look after the house in Massachusetts until I can sell it.”

“The photographer is presumably familiar with the premises,” Sherlock pointed out. “She might also need the money if she wishes to continue attending galas and other such events.”

“Sherlock,” John began, but Campbell-Williams interrupted him.

“No, your partner’s got a point. I just...  I just wish I didn’t feel like such an idiot for marrying David in the first place.”

“I married a professional assassin,” John heard himself say. He sounded amazingly calm about it.  “She shot Sherlock.”  After all this time, it was a relief to be able to speak of it so conversationally.  Perhaps he could do so now because it might help Campbell-Williams to hear it.

Campbell-Williams raised her eyebrows. “Before or after the wedding?”

“After,” replied Sherlock, “But not for the reason you’re thinking, especially given John’s societally-endorsed obsession with colour change. I interrupted her at work when we unintentionally went after the same target.”

Especially given? “Now wait a minute...”

Campbell-Williams cut John off again. “A professional disagreement, then.”

“So to speak,” Sherlock agreed.

John made another try. “Sherlock...”

“Answer me this if you will, Mr Holmes. Prior to Dr Watson’s marriage, had you ever attempted to discuss his ‘obsession’ with him?”

“I don’t _have_ an obsess-“

“No.”

“I see,” said Campbell-Williams, looking from one to the other of the two men. She rose from her seat.  “I should be going.  Thank you both for being so candid.  Now I feel like less of an idiot, at least relatively speaking.”  She headed for the door, back straight, shoulders square.

“Dr Campbell-Williams...”

She turned slightly as Sherlock spoke again.

“You may want to try looking for someone who’s noticeable not for the degree to which they themselves shine but rather as a conductor of light.”

She looked thoughtful, then nodded. “I think I understand.  Thank you, Mr Holmes.”

And she was gone.

“All right, what the bloody hell was that about?” demanded John.

Sherlock raised his eyebrows. “I thought you would recognize the reference.”

“The conductor of light thing. Yeah.”  John felt his anger begin to drain away.  “I recognized that.”

Sherlock smiled then, genuine and warm in a way that made John feel a bit giddy. He got hold of himself and continued.  “I meant the bit about my ‘societally-endorsed objection with colour change.’”

“Perfectly valid,” said Sherlock crisply. “Prior to your marriage, you dated female silver-bands exclusively.  There would have been no point in attempting to discuss other options.”

“Sherlock, you can’t know that. ‘Prior to my marriage,’ bollocks!  What you _mean_ is prior to your fake-death stunt, because by the time you resurfaced, I wasn’t dating anymore, I was _engaged_.  If you had ever told me – wait, you _did_ tell me.  You told me you were married to your work!  Of course I dated other people!”

“Female silver-bands. Exclusively.  And in any case,” Sherlock shrugged, “The outcome would have been the same.  I would still have faked my death in order to protect you.  I will _always_ protect you, John.”  The sudden, intent ferocity in Sherlock’s voice made John shiver.  “Afterwards you would have met Mary and... found comfort with her.” 

Then before John could speak, Sherlock added quietly, a touch uncertainly, “I hope you would have.”

Staying angry had become a losing battle. “It’s the same thing, Sherlock, don’t you see?  Not telling me about your plan before you jumped.  Not telling me about... other things.  Not trusting me to make my own choices.”

Sherlock’s return shot was straight to the heart. “I told you about Victor.”

So he had. Eventually. _Finally_.  Sherlock had brought John back to 221B, and John had stayed.  Sherlock had done what he could to ease John’s way with Miranda Caustlin, but John had never called her.  Sherlock Holmes, of all people, could not have withstood the growing body of evidence arguing he might eventually, finally trust John with his vulnerable heart.

And he’d done it. Sherlock had reached out past old anger and old pain to tell the entire miserable story from beginning to end, so that John might understand the complications involved in being in a relationship with Sherlock Holmes.  Sherlock had laid everything out for John to hear and John...  In the end, it hadn’t been a choice, really.  It had been more like recognition of the place they’d always been heading towards.

No anger left now at all, John settled down next to Sherlock and took him in his arms, both giving and seeking comfort. When their lips met, however, the embrace quickly became less about comfort and more about something deeper, more primal.  John nipped at Sherlock’s lips and chased Sherlock’s tongue with his own.  He reached down to stroke the hardness at Sherlock’s groin and when Sherlock arched beneath him at the touch, ran his teeth down the tendons of Sherlock’s neck. 

This man was his. This beautiful, brilliant man was _his_ , and John knew exactly what he wanted of Sherlock in this moment.  He let go of Sherlock to slide to the floor, on knees between Sherlock’s legs.  He looked up.

Sherlock was watching him, eyes dark, high cheekbones flushed. “John,” he breathed.

“We’re doing this my way, Sherlock. Tell me if you have any advice to share.  For _god’s_ sake, tell me if you want me to stop, because I will.  But we’re doing this my way.”

“By all means, _Captain_.”

Captain, eh? John filed that tidbit away for further consideration and reached for Sherlock’s flies.  He paused to make eye contact again with Sherlock, then unzipped the other man’s trousers.  The clinging black silk pants left little to John’s imagination as he nuzzled the erection underneath, lapped at it with his tongue, blew on the damp silk.

“ _John_ ,” groaned Sherlock.  “If you’re taking advice...”  He lifted his hips from the sofa and shoved at his trousers and pants.

John grinned. “Impatient, are we?”  But he pulled the garments down around Sherlock’s ankles.  He pressed a kiss on the inside of Sherlock’s upper thigh and then considered the cock in front of his face, the blood red glans already emerging from the foreskin.  To be honest, it seemed larger from this angle than it had when he’d given Sherlock hand jobs.  But John had invaded Afghanistan.  He wasn’t about to back down now.

“Hold your hand around the base to control how much you take in,” said Sherlock, far too coherent by half for John’s liking. He bent forward and kissed the tip of Sherlock’s cock, tasting bitter-salt pre-come, then licked a broad stripe upwards along the vein.  Another couple of licks, and then John Watson took his lover’s cock into his mouth and sucked.

It wasn’t all that bad, he thought. He discovered that he could run his hand up and down the base a bit and that he could get a sort of rhythm going, alternating long, steady sucks with swirling licks.  Sherlock’s hands were in his hair, tensing and relaxing like the paws of a giant cat, which felt rather nice until John realized that Sherlock was trying not to pull but _kept forgetting_ , that John was _making_ him forget.  Then it started to feel _really good_.  He grew bolder and tongued the slit, holding Sherlock’s hips down by force as the man tried to thrust up, and that’s when John realized that _he_ was the one in control, _he_ was the one doing this _to_ Sherlock as much as _for_ Sherlock, _he_ was the one making Sherlock emit those rumbling, wordless groans, _his_ Sherlock pushed beyond coherence by John himself.

After that it was bloody fantastic. He kept trying to get more in his mouth, almost choked at one point, pulled off, caught his breath and then dived back in.  He had lost track of time when Sherlock said something sharply urgent, then gave forth an unearthly nasal keen and flooded John’s mouth.

There was a bad moment when John thought he might not be able to swallow and might have to spit it out on the carpet instead, but he managed. Sherlock looked... destroyed.  Sprawled back against the sofa, eyes shut, drawing deep, harsh breaths.  Destroyed, magnificent and _John’s_.  Then he opened his eyes and looked at John, who more or less fell on top of him and _took_ his mouth.

It was only when Sherlock slipped his hand down the front of John’s jeans that John realized that he was achingly hard. Once they’d got the jeans and John’s pants out of the way, it hardly took two strokes of Sherlock’s large, long-fingered hand before John came as well, all over Sherlock’s stomach.

After what seemed a long while later, John poked at the drowsy detective in his arms. “Enjoyed or tolerated?”

Sherlock blinked and grinned. “Couldn’t you tell?”  And then more thoughtfully, “Victor seemed rather bored, the few times he attempted fellatio.”

“I think we’ve established that Victor was an arse sufficiently that we don’t need to discuss him again.”

“Mmmm.” Sherlock nuzzled John’s sweaty neck.  “I _will_ be reciprocating.”

“Not quite yet.” John ran his fingers through Sherlock’s tangled curls and kissed the top of his head.  “Have you deleted the concept of refractory periods?”

“No. I simply haven’t had much use for it in recent years.  John, the first time we attempt penetration, I should be the recipient.  You at least have experience with women.”

John thought about that statement. Then he thought about rescinding his previous statement that they didn’t need to discuss Victor, because he had a few things he really, _really_ wanted to say about the tosser.

Sherlock straightened up, pulling out of John’s arms. “You’re upset.  We don’t _need_ to attempt penetration.  I thought you might want to.”

“Hey, that’s not what I’m upset about.” John sat up as well, taking Sherlock’s wrist and tracing the line of Sherlock’s wristband with one hand.  “I _do_ want to – both ways.  At least to try, I can’t make any promises.  But we’ve got plenty of time to experiment.  Anyway, Harry’s always telling me that sex doesn’t require penetration to be real sex.”

“Your sister is not a complete idiot. What we did just now was quite... _real_.”  Sherlock accented the last word with a raised eyebrow and a wicked grin.

“High praise. My sister knows a tattoo artist.”

Sherlock frowned. “We already match.”

“I like the idea of... matching exclusively.” Damn, why had he brought this up now?  Hadn’t he just been telling Sherlock they had plenty of time?  “Sharing something no one else does.  But I don’t mean right away, of course, there’s no need to get ahead of ourselves.  We might discuss it?”

“You’re babbling.”

“Sorry.”

“No, it’s surprisingly...”

“Neurotic?”

“I was trying to think of a word that means endearing but without the same degree of implied sentimentality. Yes, we might discuss getting matching tattoos, _possibly_ with your sister’s artist, although I’d want to see samples of this person’s work first.  And we also might get completely undressed, because we look rather ridiculous at the moment.” 

God, it seemed unreal that they could both still be almost entirely dressed, even to their shoes, with their trousers and pants pulled down to leave them naked from waist to ankle. Sherlock deftly untied his own shoes and kicked them off.  Pants and trousers followed the shoes, and then Sherlock was kneeling at John’s feet, looking up through his lashes as he dealt with _John’s_ shoes.  Suddenly, John felt as if his refractory period might be rather briefer than he’d expected. 

“We should...” he began, only to realize how dry his mouth had become. He swallowed and licked his lips.  “We should continue this in a bed.”

“Only if you promise to take off that hideous jumper.”

“Sherlock, I’m going to take _everything_ off, and so are you, and then I’m going to take you to bed...”

“ _Your_ bed.”

“I like the idea of you in my bed.”

“Good, because mine is currently occupied by a partially dissected mummified crocodile.”

“Definitely my bed, then,” said John.

Sherlock stood, reaching out to pull John to his feet with both hands. John clasped them firmly in his own, holding on as if never to let go again.


End file.
